> LIBRARY OF CaNGRESS. Skel£:.V^f?t.y/ UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. •mwmmmmm: ^=^gm &** ■■#-"^**K ^:* ' Nor blame I Death, because he bare The use of virtue out of earth; I know transplanted human worth Will bloom to profit, otherwhere. For this alone on Death I wreak The wrath that garners in my heart; He put our lives so far apart We cannot hear each other speak," —Tennyson. JOHN HANCOCK, Ph. D. A MEMOIR, WITH SELECTIONS FROM HIS WRITINGS W? \\. VENABLE, LL. D author of " The Teacher's Dream," " Beginnings of Literary Culture in THE Ohio Valley," etc. CINCINNATI C. B. RUGGLES & CO. The New American Teachers' Agency Room C, 237 Vine Street 1892 Copyrighted 1892 BY C. B. RUGGLES & Co. Press of McDonald & Eick. CONTENTS. LIFE- Childhood and Youth, .... The Awakening of Intellectual Desire, First Experiences in the Teacher's Vocation, Teacher and Principal in Cincinnati, . A Soldier in the Hundred Days' Service, Superintends a Business College, Employed by Wilson, Hinkle & Co., Superintendent of Cincinnati Schools, Joins Cincinnati Literary Club, Ten Years in Dayton, Superintendent in Chillicothe, State School Commissioner, Connection with the Ohio Teachers' Association The Ohio Teachers' Reading Circle, . Services in the National Association, Writings for Educational Journals, . Other Writings and Addresses, As an Institute Worker, Labors as Trustee of Ohio University, A Champion of Normal Schools, Other Offices and Dignities, . Death and Burial, .... Genealogy and Family Connections, Character and Life Services^ PAGE. 6 10 11 14 , 20 27 , 30 31 . 87 38 . 43 47 , 52 58 . 60 62 69 71 , 73 76 . 77 77 , 82 87 CONTENTS. II. IN MEMORIAM- Personal Letters and Messages of Condolence, Action of the Ohio Teachers' Association, . Passages from Dr. Findley's Eulogy, Remarks of Dr. Ellis, Remarks of Dr. R. W. Stevenson, Remarks of Prof. M. R. Andrews, Remarks of Dr. J. J. Burns, . . . . Action of the National Council of Education, Remarks of Dr. E. E. White, . . . . Remarks of Dr. A. J. Rickoff, Remarks of Dr. W. T. Harris, Remarks of Dr. Robert Allyn, Remarks of Dr. B. A. Hinsdale, Remarks of Dr. Le Roy D. Brown, Remarks of Dr. Peabody, ... PAGE. 103 106 107 111 113 114 , 115 116 . 116 124 . 124 125 . 126 126 . 127 III. SELECTIONS- A Place of Solemn Delight, Not too Conservative, Ignorance is Power, One Secret of Success, . A Nation's Power Computed, Natural Ability versus Education, . Knowledge and Modesty, . Teach How to Talk, Great Thinkers Utter Themselves, Don't be too Serious, A Full Compensation, Fighting Talk, . . . 129 129 129 129 130 130 130 130 130 130 130 131 CONTENTS. PAGE. The True Preacher Plain Spoken, . . . . 131 The Teacher a Reformer, 131 The True Teacher an Inspirer, 131 Great Men the Product of Their Times, . . . .131 The School System Based on Social Equality, . . 132 The Lowly Laborer, 133 Tribute to Some Lecturers, 133 Ohio's Small Colleges, .134 A Chance for all Children, 135 Teachers Must Face Criticism, 136 Education for Everybody, .137 The Old-time Schoolmaster, 139 The Spelling School, .145 Manual Training, 148 The Thinking Farmer, 149 Mason Doan Parker, . . . . . . .151 The Common Man, 156 A Tribute to Patriots, . 182 JOHN HANCOCK. CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH. Not unlike Whittier's New England country lad, with ** red lips " and " cheek of tan," must the Buckeye boy, John Hancock, have appeared, when, some sixty years ago, he began his education by taking object lessons of Nature in the free school of Out-doors. We picture him a sturdy urchin, wearing his ** torn brim " with ''jaunty grace," enjoying all the advantages which bare feet and **turned-up pantaloons" afford, in the pursuit of knowl- edge or pleasure, in wood and field or beside the alluring brook. The visible surroundings of the log-cabin home in which he spent his first years were varied, beautiful and inspiring ; and if physical environment has much to do in forming individual character, the Clermont hills and valleys are to be reckoned among the influential teachers of him whose career it is the purpose of this memoir to trace. John Hancock was born February i8, 1825, in a small farm house, a log-cabin, built by his father, situated on a high summit overlooking Point Pleasant, the home of General Grant, and commanding a noble view of the Ohio River and the Kentucky hills beyond. The village nearest to this rustic home was the quiet hamlet of Laurel. 6 JOHN HANCOCK. David Hancock, the father of John, born in New Jersey in 1797, came with his parents to Clermont County, Ohio, early in the century, and ''grew up with the country." He was a man of force, rigid in morals, devout in religion, a Methodist, thoroughly versed in Scripture, a fluent and agreeable talker, and a person of considerable local influence. The ancient and honorable trade by which he earned his living was that of carpentry, a craft which he practiced with much industry and skill, building many houses and barns in his neighborhood. He married Thomas Anne Roberts, a woman of Welsh origin and good family, who is described as a " bright and attractive little lady." The issue of the union was a family of three sons and two daughters. The first-born of these was John, the subject of our sketch. The mother died at the age of thirty-five, leaving to the care of her bereaved husband the five young children. It happened very fortunately for the motherless lad that he attracted the attention and won the sympathy of a worthy couple, Mrs. Mary Moore and her husband Jeptha Moore, v/ho lived near Laurel, and who, being childless, besought David Hancock to allow them to adopt John as their own. Mrs. Moore, familiarly known in the neigh- borhood as " Aunt Mary," on account of her kindliness, seems to have been the prime mover in this solicitation, which resulted according to her desire and proved greatly to the advantage and happiness of all concerned. The semi-orphan boy found a new mother in * 'Aunt Mary," and continued to reside with the Moores during the years of his minority. The wide-ranging intelligence of Mrs. Moore, her positive principles, political and social, her enthusiasm, her genial humor, and her extraordinary energy, all CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH. 7 brought actively to bear on the training of the lad she had undertaken to "bring up," did much to determine his habits, studies and motives. She was a typical Quakeress. Mrs. Hancock writes that the '* good lady's dear old face, at the age of ninety years, would still ripple with smiles at the mirthful sallies of the boy, long grown a man, whom she had reared. She had a marked influence on his character, being strong intel- lectually, and kindly firm. The snug library she had collected, supplemented by his own limited buyings of books, was very helpful to him." Among the books on **Aunt Mary's" shelves were Gibbon's "Rome," Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress," and Fox's "Book of Martyrs," and these the rigorous matron required her charge to read aloud to her of nights. It proved a long, hard pull to go through Gibbon; the "Pilgrim's Prog- ress" seemed, by contrast, in the nature of recreation; but the " Book of Martyrs " was pure pain, as the reader declared in after years : he was ashamed, when a boy, to confess to the serene Mrs. Moore how a lump came into his throat and a mist before his eyes whenever he opened the pages of Fox, and beheld the awful pictures. Dr. Hancock's obliging amiability was shown towards his benefactress by the habit he maintained of paying her occasional visits until the end of her long life, and of reading to her in compliance with her request or dictation. Only two weeks before the day of her death he called on her. She had been for some time confined to her bed, and unable to do her own reading, but she had preserved carefully on file the late numbers of the " National Era" and the "Anti-Slavery Standard," and availing herself of her opportunity, she solicited her obedient foster-son to read in regular order the newspaper report of the 8 JOHN HANCOCK. leading political events that had transpired since her illness began. Of course her wish was gratified. The first teaching outside of the home circle that John Hancock received, was given in the Carmel school near Laurel, and the next in the Franklin district. The veteran educator of Clermont County, Prof. James K. Parker, familiarly but reverently known by his friends and former pupils as " Teacher Parker," furnishes some interesting reminiscences of the boy. He writes : **My first acquaintance with Dr. John Hancock was in the autumn of 1838, when I was teaching a country school in the Franklin district in Southern Clermont County, and he was enrolled as one of the pupils. His fondness for reading was early developed, In my school I kept a weekly record of the number of pages read by each pupil — aside from the regular studies — and reported to me every Monday morning. John's record was among the highest, if not the very highest. At that time the inhabitants of Franklin district were more noted than those of any other neighborhood in the county for intelligence and commendable aspirations. Prof. Joseph Herron, late of Cincinnati, was one of the earlier teachers in that district ; he left his wholesome impress upon the young people. Among Mr. Hancock's schoolmates in that fall term, at least three arose to some degree of eminence. Hon. John Ferguson became a very successful teacher, County Auditor and member of the Ohio Legislature ; P. J. Donham, Esq., was for many years a prominent member of the Hamilton County bar ; the late Judge T. Q. Ashburn arose through various grades of honor to a place in the Senate of Ohio. These four men were firm and lifelong friends. Mr. Donham is the only survivor. CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH. 9 They were all greatly aided in their aspirations by a circulating library, established by some of the older citizens of the district, which these young men read freely. Mr. Hancock had chosen the profession of law, and commenced his preparatory studies about the time the Clermont County Teachers' Institute was organized. He was invited to become a member of it, which he did, and soon became so enamored t)f teaching as to adopt it as his life work. After he had been a teacher m the Cincinnati public schools a few years, he again became my pupil in Cler- mont Academy to pursue, during his summer vacation, some of the higher branches of mathematics. He was always a diligent student, respectful, loyal and be- loved." Mr. Charles N. Browning, of Wilmington, Ohio, a schoolmate of Mr. Hancock, gives additional facts. He says : ** The writer remembers him from the day he first entered the district school at Franklin, noted in those days for the high standard which it occupied among the schools of the section. Among his schoolmates at that time were Rev. James H. Noble, who afterwards became and still is a prominent Methodist minister of Indiana and Illinois; the Donhams, the Shaws, the Fergusons, the Nichols, the Robbs, and many others who became promi- nent in agricultural, educational and political affairs in Southern Ohio. John was a bright and studious boy, and soon found his place at the head of his classes. It is too long a story to tell how the boy studied and worked, and how, even after he had become a teacher, he used to dismiss his summer school and come home to assist his foster parents and their neighbors in their harvesting. 10 JOHN HANCOCK. He was a prime favorite with those with whom he mingled in those early days." Dr. Hancock himself gave, in one of his lectures, a very lively reminiscence of his early school days,. from which I quote a passage describing most felicitously THE AWAKENING OF INTELLECTUAL DESIRE. ** Perhaps I may be pardoned if I illustrate, from my own observation, the power of advanced studies to wake up the mind. In my own early boyhood, I attended a country district school in Southwestern Ohio. The school had been served by many masters, the boundaries of whose mathematical knowledge extended not beyond the limits of Pike's Arithmetic, and whose very small stock of grammar was gathered in a painful way from the pages of Kirkham. Most of these teachers worked on the farm in the summer, and kept school in the winter. Of the quality of their farming I know nothing derogatory, but of their school-keeping, with an honorable exception or two, one would have to be very liberal indeed to say anything commendatory. Winter after winter we ground over our Kirkham ; and winter after winter we worked through Pike — ^for we never recited in arithmetic, the master * doing ' the sums for us when we were * stalled,' as we called it— that is, if he could. Into this weary, arid and stultifying routine broke a shy young man who had, by some chance, wandered away from Williams College, in old Massachusetts, to that secluded spot. This young man was an elegant scholar, a person of excellent judgment, and a born teacher. He breathed into us young skeletons the breath of life. The old Pikes, on his advice, were thrown aside, and algebra, a FIRST EXPERIENCES AS A TEACHER. n thing of which we had not even heard, was substituted. The study was a revelation to us, and under his quiet and skillful leadership became, as the boys said, more interesting than a novel. A young man residing outside the district, who, prompted by a divine hunger for knowledge, had spent some time in a distant academy, came into the school to read Latin. The Latin, to us, who, perforce, must listen to the recitation in it, was indeed a dead language, but the elegant English into which our master turned the great orator's periods, appealed to a slumbering sense of the beautiful, and we began to wish very earnestly that we might some day be able to read Cicero. The young man from Williams stayed with us but a single quarter, but the life he had breathed into us did not die^" FIRST EXPERIENCES IN THE TEACHER'S VOCATION. John Hancock began his experience as school-master in the old log school-house of the Franklin district, Monroe township, in the year 1843, when he was about eighteen years of age. He afterwards taught in other rural districts, and later in the villages of Amelia, Batavia and New Richmond, Clermont County. Con- stantly gaining in power and influence, he soon won his way to leadership among the teachers of his vicinity. When it was proposed to organize a teachers' association in Clermont County, being willing to work, and compe- tent to plan, he was pushed forward by the older teachers and shared with them the highest duties of local manage- ment. I am indebted to Mr. Browning for particulars concerning the Clermont Association, and the part taken in its founding by Mr. Hancock. Mr. Browning says, 12 JOHN HANCOCK. referring to certain manuscripts in his possession : ** Among them we fmd the minutes of a teachers' meeting held near Laurel, Clermont County, Ohio, January 29, 1848. Charles Robb, a younger brother of the late Dr. Andrew Robb, was made chairman, and Mr. Hancock, secretary. Mr. Hancock read an essay * On the National Association for the Promotion of Education.' Mr. Han- cock was then but twenty-three years old, a mere boy as we think of him now, and yet at that early age was beginning to grapple with questions, the mastery of which in later years, made him the power in the educational world which he became. This gathering adjourned to meet at Franklin School-house on the last Saturday in April, 1848. Another paper of the collection is a copy of the * Preamble and Constitution of the Clermont County Association of Teachers,' This is in Mr. Hancock's handwriting and shows the neatness and care with which he was wont to do such things. This paper has no date, but evidently was written in 1848 or '49. Appended thereto we fmd the following names : E. T. Small, Wm. T. Parker, Wm. H. Heyford, Henry S. Kerr, Wm. Sargent, Wm. L. Rob- inson, John Dimmitt, Mark Stinchfield, C. C. Parker, Robert Shaw, Daniel L. Stinchfield, E. Sears, Wm. Young, John J. Hooker, F. L. Cleveland, Wm. B. Fisher, M. Jamieson, James K. Parker, Thomas W. Rathbone, L. Behymer, David Mulloy, John Ferguson, L. Jeffers, Joseph Shaw, Uriah Rice, Wm. L. Hamilton, Rev. A. J. McLaughlin, Dr. Hopkins, E. Ricker, and Jacob Clark." The Hon. E. C. Ellis, now of Crestvue, near Glendale, Ohio, and formerly prominent in educational affairs in Southern Ohio, sends the following informal and graphic account of his early acquaintance with Mr. Hancock: ** About the time the Clermont County Institute was FIRST EXPERIENCES AS A TEACHER. 13 organized I had been instrumental in organizing one in Brown County, and I visited the Clermont Institute on a ' still hunt ' for ideas. In those days, Institutes were conducted on the class system instead of the modern method of instructing by lectures. At that session, Hancock was the teacher of mental arithmetic, and his class was the first to recite after I entered the room. At that time but few teachers had been trained to oral solu- tions, as they were only beginning to introduce this subject into the school. Hancock had made good preparation and was master of the situation. I remember with what delight he would propound his * puzzlers' to the older teachers, most of whom were compelled to acknowledge their inability to * work the questions ' without using the pencil. If no one in the class could solve the example, or if the solution and every step was not logical, he would give the solution himself, and as I write I can see him, as I saw him then in his quiet way, leading the class, step by by step, from the premises to the conclusion. He was methodical in his work. Everything was systematized, and the solution must not deviate from the order he had marked out. The steps in his solution were as rigidly adhered to as if he were demonstrating a theorem in geometry. This charac- teristic, developed so early in life, it has always appeared to me, furnishes the key to his future success. During this class exercise our acquaintance, which ripened into a life-long friendship, began. You know, that in my younger days I had a penchant for mathe- matical studies, and it happened that I was familiar with the class of examples he was presenting. Being a stranger, I was not called upon to solve any of the examples, but * wise in my own conceit ' and anxious. 14 JOHN HANCOCK. as young men usually are, to display my erudition (?), I volunteered a solution to a problem that was giving the class trouble. The teacher pronounced it correct, inquired my name, residence, etc., and placed my name in his class-book." TEACHER AND PRINCIPAL IN DISTRICT AND INTERMEDI- ATE SCHOOLS OF CINCINNATI. Generally there is found '* room at the top" for ambitious worth. Fortunately for Mr. Hancock, his ability was discovered by an appreciative educator of prominence, who had the inclination and the power to secure for him an advantageous position in one of the District Schools of Cincinnati. Doctor Joseph Ray, the mathematician, — whose distinguished services as profes- sor in Woodward High School began in 183 1 and continued to the date of his death, April, 1855 — became acquainted with Mr. Hancock in 1850, at a teachers' gathering in Clermont County, and was impressed so favorably by the young man's qualifications that he induced the author- ities to appoint Hancock first assistant in what was known as the Upper Race Street School, of which Mr. Andrew J. Rickoff was then principal. Thus, by Doctor Ray, were brought into collaboration two men whom common pursuits and mutual sympathies drew together into a close, warm and enduring friendship. *'Andy " Rickoff, as he was called familiarly by his friend **John," came to Cincinnati to teach, in August, 1847. His experience up to that time had been not unlike that of Mr. Hancock. The two were of nearly the same age, and both had proven successful in the management of several country and village schools. Mr. Rickoff began TEACHER AND PRINCIPAL IN CINCINNATI. 15 his professional career in 1840. He was identified with educational affairs in Cincinnati, as principal of public and private schools, or as Superintendent of Schools, and President of the Board of Education, for a period of about eighteen years, or until 1867, when he removed to Cleve- land ; and during all that time, Hancock and he were very intimately associated, in private life and in public educa- tional concerns. Dr. Rickoff kindly contributes to this Memoir some personal reminiscences of his friend. He writes : "While Dr. Joseph Ray was delivering a course of lectures before the Teachers Institute of Clermont County, his attention was attracted by Mr. Hancock, then about twenty-five years of age. He marked him as a particularly able teacher, and on his return to the city the Doctor recommended him to me as one who would fill the vacant place of first assistant in the old Sixth District School, of which I was then Principal. Mr. Hancock was accordingly invited to take the place, and in only a few days he showed that the Doctor had not been mistaken in the man. This was at least forty years ago. From that time to the day of his death I regarded him as a very dear friend. There have been, indeed, few, if any, with whom I have ever been so intimately associated. Soon after Mr. Hancock became an assistant in the schools of Cincinnati, he, in company with Mr. O. J. Wilson, then Principal of the Twelfth District School, and afterwards for many years the head of the great Western firm of school book publishers, and two or three others, formed a literary club that met weekly in the Principal's room of the old Sixth District. At the meet- ings of this club, the time was passed in the reading of l6 JOHN HANCOCK. essays by the members, in the discussion of the authors of the day, and of the older worthies whose works are the favorite studies of all true students of English litera- ture, Mr. Hancock and Mr. Wilson were the principal contributors to the exercises of this club. The meetings of the club were discontinued on the retirement of two of its members from the public school service. It was not long, however, until we find Mr. Hancock engaging with peculiar zest in the work of another club, that held its meetings in my private school room. The lectures of Sir William Hamilton on Meta- physics and his Lectures on Logic, then just published in this country, received our principal attention for nearly a year. During our reading of these works, and for a long time afterward, we were favored by the presence and participation of Dr. Eli T. Tappan, who was facile princeps in these studies. It is worthy of note that Mr. Hancock succeeded his old friend as State School Com- missioner, and it is sad to think that both of them, within so short a time, should have been removed from their offices by the hand of death. The names of two more noble men never graced public records. They were the purest men whom I have ever known. They were ambitious only to do their whole duty. It is fortunate for the State when such men are called to fill its most important offices. Their mutual friendship was an honor to both of them. Mr. Hancock's readiness in debate, his thorough information on almost every subject pertaining to edu- cation, have been observed by all who have heard him in teachers* institutes. State and National conventions, in the meetings of the Superintendent's Department of Education, or in the National Council. Debate was not TEACHER AND PRINCIPAL IN CINCINNATI. 17 likely to flag when he was present. Hence he was an invaluable participant in any meeting where questions of importance were to be discussed with a view of arousing public interest. His ability in this direction was, no doubt, owing in great degree to the faithfulness with which he kept up his reading on psychological subjects and the earnestness with which he entered into the exercises of the literary clubs of which he was a member. On my retirement from the principalship of the Sixth District School, Mr. Hancock was appointed. Soon after this, the present plan of organization was recommended and adopted by the Board of Education. The particular change which was destined to bring Mr. Hancock prom- inently before the public was the establishment of the Intermediate Schools whereby the higher classes of the Common District Schools were gathered together in four separate schools. The First Intermediate did not draw any pupils from Mr. Hancock's school, and hence he was not then promoted ; but only a year elapsed when it was found that the new school needed a man at the head of it of superior administrative ability, and Mr. Hancock was chosen to what was then and is still considered a difficult position. His selection was at once justified by the result. He soon carried the experiment to complete success. Opposition to the new system rapidly abated and soon died out. Owing to his executive tact, his industry, the straightforward, manly way in which he met the objections of the conservatives, it was not long before the school became very popular, and was followed by the establishment of two or three more schools of the same class." Mr. B. B, Stewart, now of New York City, gives a l8 JOHN HANCOCK. lively and forcible description of Dr. Hancock's character and methods as shown in the management of the First Intermediate School, in which school Mr. Stewart was a teacher for several years. He writes : *' Early in September of 1861 I began teaching in the First Intermediate School with Mr. H. for Principal. Then began a friendship that 1 have reason to believe was mutual. He was an earnest and devoted teacher. He taught more than was found in books. Among teachers and pupils he knew no favorites. He was exacting, but kind ; and honest effort in the performance of duty always won his sympathy and commendation. He was an example to those around him. He believed all he taught. He taught only the manly and the true, and his influence on pupils was always for good. He won and held the respect of the rudest boys. As a disciplinarian he was unsurpassed. The expression coming from a group of noisy boys, ' Oh, you can't fool Hancock,' meant a volume. The boys sat in judgment on the teacher — as boys will. Their rough expression was earnest and honest, the result of clear conviction, and carried with it the boys' belief in its converse. * Hancock won't fool the boys.' Fathers, Mothers, Teachers, has the experience of years brought this truth home to you ? ' You can't fool the boys.' When * the boys ' believe you will not try to fool them you have their full confidence and you have reached the basis on which Mr. Hancock rested all his efforts to do boys good, when they camie under his care. He never forgot that * Men are only boys grown tall.' He encouraged incipient manliness in a boy, believing that with man- hood's years he would be a * manly man.' I once asked a boy who had been a pupil under Mr. Hancock, how TEACHER AND PRINCIPAL IN- CINCINNATI. 19 he liked the teacher in whose care he then was. He replied, *Oh, I don't like him as much as I do Hancock.' I asked him why. * Oh, well, Mr. Hancock never went sneaking around the school-house on his tip-toes and look- ing through the key-holes.' I replied, * How do you know your present teacher does such things?' * 'Cause we caught him at it,' came the reply, prompt and true. Conviction was complete and words were useless. That boy grew into a manly man. A few years ago he sat as President of the Cincinnati School Board. He expressed the boys' opinion of John Hancock, the teacher and the true gentleman. Mr. Hancock's sense of justice in dealing with boys was perfect. With it there sometimes was a vein of humor that was readily discerned, and m^ade acceptance of the most severe decree less repugnant to a culprit boy. The ^genuine boy' Mr. Hancock liked and thoroughly comprehended. The genuine boy likes to start to school immediately after breakfast. He can thus avoid doing any chores at home, and he can crowd more fun into the time before school. At the First Intermediate there was a rule, * Boys are not required to be in school before 8:45 A. M. If they choose to come earlier, they must at once go to their respective rooms for study.' Coming to his school-room one morning, the hilarious shouts of half a hundred boys quickly assured Mr. Hancock that this rule was being broken. An ominous sound of the bell from the window stopped the play, and all the boys were directed to report at once to Mr. H. Less than ten came. The others dodged into their rooms, hoping to escape the consequences. With Mr. H., justice proceeded on care-- ful lines. He did not promptly punish the honest fellows who came forward, so confessing themselves violators of 20 JOHN HANCOCK. the rule. He talked with them, and told them to report at recess. Then more talk, and an order to report at noon before going for dinner ; more talk and instruction to report before school afternoon session. Then report at the afternoon recess, and again after the close of school for the day. This order continued, until after school on Friday evening about forty boys reported, each admitting that he had played * Foot-and-a-Half — a kind of leap-frog game — before school in the morning, in viola- tion of rule. Mr. H. had been so pleasant in his seeking for facts that the boys became interested in bringing every * dodger * to the front. In time they saw fun in reporting to Mr. H. They would conjure together, trying to bring in every boy they could. I am not sure some of the boys did not assume that some previous violation of the rule entitled them to report and join in the investigation. What followed I have from the father of one of the boys. He learned that the investigation had closed, and asked his boy the result. * Well,' said the boy, * Hancock told us he disliked whipping, but his dislike was a constant quantity, it neither increased nor decreased with the number of boys, and he licked us all. We didn't care much for a whipping from Hancock ; he was kind o' funny before he went at it.' Truly, Mr. Hancock disliked the use of the rod. In dealing with boys he surely had 'malice towards none, charity for all.' " A SOLDIER IN THE HUNDRED DAYS' SERVICE. The news of Sumter's bombardment and surrender imparted swift heat to Mr. Hancock's patriotic blood. The military strain in his composition, imparted by a soldier father and transmitted to a soldier son, responded A SOLDIER FN THE HUNDRED DAYS' SERVICE. 21 to the rumor of war. His editorials in the Journal of Progress betray his manifest excitement; the school- master's habit of peace was ruffled by the storm and stress of the crisis. The teachers of Cincinnati organ- ized a military company of Home Guards, April 20, 1861, only eight days after the first cannon shot of the Civil War sent its echo booming over the continent. The Journal of Progress for May, 1861, describes a flag- raising over the new building of the Fifth District School ; and mentions that President Lorin Andrews had become a captain, at Gambler, and that Oxford and Antioch Colleges, and the Southwestern Normal School at Lebanon had lost many of their best students by volun- teering — a loss which editor Hancock seemed rather to rejoice in than to deplore. In 1863, just previous to the famous Kirby Smith raid, and the threatened siege of Cincinnati, the teachers of the public and private schools were formed into a mili- tary body, the Teachers' Rifle Company. Early in 1864 came the call for Hundred Days' Men from Ohio's Governor, and May 2, 1864, found the Teach- ers' Rifles a part of the 138th Regiment, O. V. I., in camp, under Col. S. S. Fisher. John Hancock was enrolled, with many of his personal friends, as a private soldier. What manner of man he proved himself to be, under the trying condition of soldier life, is well told by his devoted friend, Ben. B. Stewart, who sends me the following : ** It became an axiom in camp, * If you would know a man, enlist him in the army for active service and go with him.' Free from home influences, and free from the social restraints imposed by good society, men in the army soon reached their natural level. All the selfish- 22 JOHN HANCOCK. ness, cowardice, laziness — in short, all the mean traits in a man — sooner or later came to the front. In camp to say of a man, * We know him,' was to furnish him with a lasting certificate of character, good or bad. Good stand- ing at home was no guarantee of conduct when in the full swing of army life. Men entered the army thinking they knew one another. After a term of service, they came home knowing one another. Too often, old friendships were broken ; but new and lasting ones were formed. From the first, Mr. Han- cock was a typical soldier. He never questioned orders. He obeyed. He never shirked any duty, however dis- tasteful. In camp or on the march he was willing to look on the brighter side. Whether it was duty to shovel dirt in the fortifications on the Potomac, or cut brush on the Appomatox, he responded promptly and cheerfully to duty's call. As a soldier he had the regard of the meanest man in camp. More than one graceless fellow did better than he planned because he knew Hancock and desired to be esteemed by him. Mason D. Parker and John Hancock were friends from boyhood. I was born in the same county, and hence was adopted. We three tented together. Camp life in connection with special mention of Mr. Hancock necessarily includes us all. Parker once said, ' The only blemish on John's character is, he can't cook. The provoking feature is, he delights in his awkward- ness.' My friendly regard for Mr. H. has always been such that I deem it best to rest on Parker's testi- mony in the case, rather than press investigation. Mr. H. did once undertake to make our morning coffee. We kept our coffee in a bag. Mr. Hancock never realized apparently that in the culinary art * exact science ' is A SOLDIER IN THE HUNDRED DAYS* SERVICE. 23 always requisite. He tried to make coffee and at the same time discuss the results of a recent cavalry raid against the Weldon Railroad. He got lost on the raid and kept on making the coffee. He shook our coffee bag over the coffee-pot as he talked, until the dry brown coffee poured out over the top. Parker was a prudent housekeeper. He thundered out, * John, mercy sakes alive — what are you doing .?' *Why, Mason ! I guess I've put in a leetle too much.' The conversation of these time-tried friends sparkled often with wit and humor. Mohn, I'm a man of remarkable forethought.' *Well, Mason, I never knew it.' 'Yes, John, I am a man of remarkable forethought — but it always comes behind.' Another time, 'John! I wish you'd take me out and knock me in the head.' 'All right, but what for, Mason.?' ' Well, I forget to do something I ought to have done.' The forgotton 'something' was never a serious matter. Near our camp the colored people were holding a camp-meeting. We all felt an interest in it and the leader, Uncle Richard Baily. ' Uncle Richard ' was a colored brother advanced in years. He told us they called their gathering 'The Union Camp Meeting,' because it was the first one ever held without the permission of masters, and also because of the presence of 'de union soldiers.' Uncle Richard reported at our tent almost every morning on one pretext or another. One night during service the old man was standing in the pulpit, when he suddenly made a leap in the air that seemed likely to land him outside the pulpit and to end in disaster. The brethren caught him and placed him safely on his feet. When he visited us next morning Mr. Hancock gravely inquired why he jumped so high 24 JOHN HANCOCIC. last night. * Well, Massa ! when the Migion ob de Lawd Jesus Christ git in my soul dis ole body it aint nothin'; it go right up.' It surely did go up. The last night of the series, the meeting was a * powerful one.' When Uncle Richard reported in the morning Mr. Han- cock asked him how many were converted. 'About five head shuah, and more, I think, come in by mawnin,' Counting immortal souls by the head seemed droll enough, but at once adopting Uncle Richard's method, Mr. H. asked * how many head had been converted in all.' ' Twenty-three head, sah,* came the answer, in tones that implied no doubt. We never, by any levity of manner, led Uncle Richard to think we were otherwise than solemnly impressed. Pleasant reminiscences these. How many more do follow, but not for record here. One evening, in the quiet of my home, after a rush- ing day — here in busy New York — a newspaper slip was handed me. It told me * John Hancock died at his desk, in the midst of his work* — the work he loved. Dead? On the hearts of those v/ho love him still is written * not dead.* Not mustered out, but mustered in. He heard the sound of the bugle call and entered into a service of love forever. Thus we believe, and so — dear friend of many years- — sure that, at the longest, we soon shall follow thee, we will say not good night, but in a better world *bid thee good morning.' " To this tribute, at once humorous and pathetic, we may here appropriately add the testimony of another friend and comrade, Mr. Rickoff, who writes : *'A military company formed shortly after the break- ing out of the War of the Rebellion, and of which Mr. Hancock and I were both members, being called into service in the spring of 1864, we were thrown together A SOLDIER IN THE HUNDRED DAYS' SERVICE. 25 the following summer more intimately than at any time before. Though the company was not exposed to any particular danger nor subject for any considerable time at a stretch to any severe privations, yet the campaign was not all a pleasant picnic to be remembered with unwonted pleasure. To men who had not for years, perhaps never, been accustomed to physical labor of any kind, marching for two or three days together in dusty sand two or three inches deep, carrying arms, ammu- nitions, haversack and knapsack till strong men fainted, and when in camp, digging in trenches with pickaxe and spade, were, to say the least, not pleasant recreations. Under these circumstances Mr. Hancock bore the test of true manhood. His patient endurance, his unflinching performance of every duty, his readiness to aid those of his comrades who were not so strong as himself, were fit subjects for the admiration of all. His humorous anec- dotes enlivened the march; reminiscences drawn from readings of history and literature, humorous comments on the rumors that at times agitated the regiment, and his discussions of military and political characters then prominent, served to inform as well as entertain his mates at the camp-fire. When I recall these things to mind my thought recurs to Mason D. Parker, who was Mr. Hancock's most inti- mate friend. He was a man of fine literary taste and a writer of ability. The essays that he read in* the liter- ary clubs were worthy of the best magazines, but his ideals of excellence were so high and his modesty so dominant that he shrank from any effort to bring them into public notice in any form. He had been recom- mended for employment in the schools of Cincinnati by Mr. Hancock, and at the time of the Hundred Days' 26 JOHN HANCOCK. Service he was Principal of one of the Intermediates. On the march from Fort Powhatan to City Point he sank at the roadside, so exhausted that his vitality was per- manently affected, and shortly after his return home he bade his wife and little daughter his last good-bye." The devoted friendship existing between Hancock and Parker, feelingly dwelt upon by both Mr. Stewart and Mr. Rickoff, demands special commemoration in these pages, and there is a mournful satisfaction in recording its almost sacred history. These congenial spirits were to each other as Damon and Pythias. Nothing more beautiful and touching in biography than the noble, manly, tender, and poetical attachment between these faithful souls. They went to school together ; they pur- sued common studies; they roomed together in the bachelor days when teaching in Cincinnati; they went together courting their sweethearts ; they were in almost daily intercourse up to the time of Parker's death. Mr. E. C. Ellis writing of Mr. Hancock's love for ''Mase" Parker says, *'A few years ago I visited H at his home in Chillicothe, and, in talking over the bygone, the death of Parker was referred to, and Dr. Hancock heav- ing a deep sigh said, * The death of Mason D. Parker was the heaviest blow of my life. He was a brilliant young man, devoted to his books, a staunch friend, and I felt that 1 could not live without him.' " . Shortly after Parker's death, Mr. Hancock wrote a sketch of his life and character, which was published in the ** Ohio Educational Monthly," and which is repro- duced among the selections contained in this volume. 27 SUPERINTENDS A BUSINESS COLLEGE. On his return home after the Hundred Days' Service, Mr. Hancock resigned his position as Principal of the First Intermediate School, and entered into an engage- ment with Richard Nelson to become Superintendent of Nelson's Commercial College, at a salary of $2,000 a year. On the occasion of his retirement from the school his assistant teachers presented him with a magnificent set of Shakespeare's works. His friend and first assist- ant, Mr. B. B. Stewart, also resigned the place he had filled in the First Intermediate School, and was likewise employed by the Nelson Business College. The general duties of Mr. Hancock in the college were managerial. His executive capacity was exercised in the efficient control of the students. In addition to his supervisory work he took upon him the editorship of a weekly newspaper, 'Mhe News and Educator," pub- lished by Nelson & Co. Not long after his installment in this new position, Mr. Hancock was made the recipient of a splendid silver ser- vice, the gift of friends connected with the work of edu- cation. The writer recalls every circumstance of the occasion on which the present was bestowed, on the evening of November 10, 1865, ir^ one of the rooms of the Nelson College. An exceedingly merry company of ladies and gentlemen assembled, quite unexpectedly to Mr. Hancock, who was overcome with surprise and pleased confusion when Mr. Rickoff addressed him in these words : '' Mr. Hancock :— I am requested by your old friends among the Teachers and Trustees of the Schools, to pre- sent you, in their behalf, these testimonials of their high 28 JOHN HANCOCK. appreciation of your success as a teacher, and their regard for you as a man. No evidence of your success as an instructor of youth is necessary, other than the great prosperity in which we find the First Intermediate School. I well recollect with what diffidence, almost reluctance, you consented to take charge of it, when, ten years ago, in behalf of the Trustees, I tendered to you its principalship. The experiment of the Intermediate School System depended in no slight degree upon the result of our action. The institution was committed to you with confidence, and I have to say to-night that no one has ever doubted the wisdom of the choice we then made. The final adoption of the Intermediate scheme was doubtless owing to your skill and indomitable perseverance. You secured not only the success of the school, but since you went into it, not less than a thousand pupils have passed through the prescribed course under your direction, and I may safely say that in as many young and enthusiastic hearts, kind remembrances of you are warmly cherished. The gentlemen and ladies who have been associated with you, as assistant teachers, will always remember you with peculiar satisfaction. In their arduous and perplexing duties you have given them wise counsel and unflinching support. That you have had a good influ- ence upon them it is sufficient evidence for us to call to mind the fact that a large proportion of those who have been with you have become most devoted and successful teachers in the schools. The delicacy of private friend- ship forbids us to speak of your genial qualities as a friend with the freedom which it is our duty to use when speaking of the way in which you have discharged your public duties. The free expression of gratitude for SUPERINTENDS A BUSINESS COLLEGE. 29 a man's public services, though they be very great, is sometimes obstructed by a want of sympathy for the man himself. Let the cordiality of your friends here assembled to-night testify for them whether this be so in your case. For their sake, we regret that you are leaving the public schools, but from the part you have always taken in public affairs, we have no doubt that you will continue to show an active interest in their welfare." The embarrassment of Mr. Hancock, and the abound- ing good humor of the company, prompted much genial speech-making and sportive talk on this informal occasion, and among the personal addresses brought out was a playful skit in verse entitled ** Hancock John," which afforded its victim considerable amusement at the time, and was often quoted by him with ludicrous gravity, in after years. The passage which he most relished in this metrical rhyme reads : " O number 1 is Hancock John, And letter A is he, — He loveth youth, he loveth truth. He loveth libertee ; He loveth roast chickens. He loveth Charles Dickens, He loveth his children and wife, He loveth a sunshiny life, He loveth his friend and his nation, And the pedagogue's noble vocation ; He loveth a funny conundrum. He laughs at your puns though you blund'r 'em ; Stupidity soon is he sick of, He loveth to love Andy Rickoff ; Invention he knoweth the trick of ; His editor's pen is a swinger, He writeth like pepper and ginger ; 30 JOHN HANCOCK. He loveth a man that is honest ; Deceit in his character non est ; He isn't deficient in temper, He'll fight for his principles semper; He bled in the Hundred Days' service, And wasn't affrighted or nervous." EMPLOYED BY WILSON, HINKLE & CO. Mr. Hancock's connection with the Commercial Col- lege was not of long continuance. He was employed, in 1866, by Wilson, Hinkle & Co., school-book publishers of Cincinnati, and he collected material for a new series of School Readers. He entered upon this work early in the year, had an office in the publishing house, and was regular and prompt in attendance upon his duties. In collecting suitable material for the work assigned him, he was obliged, in his reading and research, to range widely over a broad field of literature, embracing the writings of the best authors of both prose and verse in the English language. His industry, good taste, and sound judgment enabled him in the course of a few months to bring together a mass of material admirably adapted to the end in view. He then entered upon the work of arrangement and progressive gradation of his selections, the composition of brief biographical sketches of authors, explanatory notes, illustrations and comments. While thus employed he devoted considerable time to attendance upon Teachers' Institutes in Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky, lecturing upon educational topics, and furnishing valuable class instruction. While so engaged he was able to submit the material he had compiled to the criticism and judgment of practical educators, and learn their views as to its adaptation to school- SUPERINTENDENT OF CINCINNATI SCHOOLS. 31 room uses. He was thus making most satisfactory progress in the preparation of his manuscript, and was repeatedly assured by the senior member of the publishing house of the approval of his work by himself and associates. But Mr. Hancock, while a patient and cheerful worker wherever duty placed him, was ambi- tious of success in a more active and public sphere of education. The Superintendency of the Public Schools of Cincinnati was offered him, and after brief hesitation he accepted it, necessarily leaving to other hands the completion of the literary work upon which he had been engaged. During the year he was with Wilson, Hinkle & Co. he displayed in a high degree those qualities which characterized his career in every field of labor in which he engaged, — earnestness, zeal, conscientious fidelity and devotion to his work, and a generous, hearty sym- pathy, and sunny cheer that endeared him to all with whom he came in contact. His withdrawal from the work upon which he was so successfully engaged was deeply regretted by everyone connected with the house, but by no one more sincerely than by his early and life- long friend, Mr. Wilson. Had he desired to remain in the business, he probably would soon have been promoted to a partnership in the great firm. SUPERINTENDENT OF CINCINNATI SCHOOLS. Mr. Hancock was elected to the superintendency of the public schools of Cincinnati, in September, 1867, succeeding Lyman Harding. Samuel S. Fisher was at the time President of the Cincinnati Board of Education. In the Spring of 1868, the Board granted to the Super- 32 JOHN HANCOCK. intendent a three weeks' leave of absence, and made an appropriation to pay his expenses, in order to afford him an opportunity to visit some of the eastern cities to study the workings of their public schools and other educa- tional institutions. Mr. Hancock set out on this tour of inspection on May 15, 1868, and, after his return, embodied in his first Annual Report, for the year ending June 30, 1868, the results of his observations. The report is a lengthy one extending over 62 pages, and is a valuable document of its kind. The first schools visited were those of Cleveland, Ohio, then recently reorgan- ized by Mr. Rickoff ; and of these a pretty full description is given. From Cleveland he passed on to Oswego, and saw the Normal and other schools, under the guidance of E. A. Sheldon. Proceeding to Boston, Mr. Hancock was entertained by Superintendent Philbrick, who explained to him all the peculiarities of the Common School System as exhibited in the famous center of Yankee culture. The Cincinnati pilgrim did not fail to cross the Charles and look inside Cambridge walls, — he sought out Dr. Hill, then President of Harvard, and caught glowing ideas from him. The Boston Public Library had strong attractions for our Ohio educator : he says of it in his report, ^'I doubt whether the public schools themselves are doing a much more important work than this public library." From New England he went to New York, and spent several days visiting the schools of New York City and Brooklyn. Before turning his face homeward, however, he revisited Boston, the charm of whose liter- ary institutions seems to have decidedly attracted his taste. After recounting the particulars of this eastern sojourn in a graphic manner, the Report for 1868 deals with SUPERINTENDENT OF CINCINNATI SCHOOLS. 33 several other topics ; viz. : State Normal Schools, Educa- tion in France, Prussia and England, and the Condition of the Cincinnati Schools. The Superintendent dwelt upon the importance of ''good reading" in the schools, and still more earnestly on the paramount necessity of "moral education" in all grades. A step in progress is marked in the announcement that ** It is proposed, the coming year, to begin the instruction of all the pupils in our Public Schools in Drawing. This," says the Report, 'Ms an experiment that has not been made in any other city in this country." Mr. Hancock's Semi-Annual Report, January, 1869, discusses the several branches of learning required to be taught in the city schools. It states that the experiment of introducing Drawing in all grades had proven success- ful ; and recommends that Phonography be made a regu- lar exercise in the Intermediate Schools. The Superin- tendent took much interest in the City Normal School, which was first opened in 1869, with Miss Sarah D. Dugan, of Oswego, as principal. Discussing the con- dition of pupils in the lower grades, Mr. Hancock suggested to the Board that fewer hours of study be required of the children. He said, " I believe they are kept in school too long." In his Report of June, 1869, he calls attention to the fact that the gap is too wide between the Intermediate and the High Schools, and proposes a better adjustment of the courses of study. He warns the Board and the teachers against the danger, always imminent in the schools of a large city, that modes of instruction may fall into mechanical routine ; and deprecates such a result as fatal to the best ends of human training. He would have more attention paid to cultural studies such as lead 34 JOHN HANCOCK. to generous ideas, wide sympathy and lofty aspiration. As regards sciiool government he declares, with the emphasis of experience, *'Too much importance can not be attached to discipline in a great school system. It lies at the very foundation of both intellectual and moral success. A more thoroughly demoralizing institution does not exist than a disorderly school." The Superintendent's Reports for 1870 are devoted largely to general discussion of the philosophy of educa- tion, and to an urgent presentation of the importance of higher learning as supplementary to the common school courses. The merits and claims of Cincinnati University are set forth with much force. Another question con- sidered is that of compulsory laws to secure school attendance, which Hancock strongly favored. The Report for 1871 devotes many pages to school statistics. It also enters into the practical consideration of several minor details of advice, suggestion and criticism concerning methods and motives of school teaching and management. Objection is made to concert reciting, to mere memoriter tests of knowledge, to the abuse of the percentage system, and to a blind and mechanical dependence upon text-books and records. Dr. Hancock's opinion respecting the inutility of records of recitation is very positive. He says : '* I am sure that the record of recitations of the pupils kept by the teachers of the higher grades of the District Schools, and in all the grades of the Intermediate and High Schools, might be profitably dispensed with." In order to break up the prevailing tendency to parrot-like repetition of words without ideas, the method of objective teaching, to which the Normal School of Oswego, New York, had given a new impulse, was adopted in Cincinnati, and, for a time, it produced SUPERINTENDENT OF CINCINNATI SCHOOLS. 35 excellent results. The method was applied especially to language teaching, with the design to animate the observing powers and to elicit original expression. Mr. Hancock wrote, with enthusiasm: *Mf the Cincinnati Schools possess one distinguishing trait above all others, it is the prominence that language culture occupies in the course of study." Following out the theories suggested by the objective method, and persistently combating rote study and per- functory teaching, the Superintendent made the most of drawing, music, and language lessons, as means of awakening the mind and firing a genuine interest in school work. With a similar purpose he introduced a new plan of imparting the facts of history, — the plan of continuous and animated reading, instead of the cut-and- dried method in vogue. It was hoped the experiment would relieve the pupils of drudgery hateful to them, and as ineffectual as repulsive; but the nev/ departure was only partially successful. Taken throughout, the administration of Mr. Hancock, covering a period of seven years, was characterized by his policy of opposition to dullness, routine ''cram," and in general, to mechanical as distinguished from vital education. The Superintendent thought constantly of the development of the children's faculties, and measured the value of all books and methods by their result in producing mental power and moral conduct. He saw no probability of much good to be derived from any study or system that was not intelligently applied by competent and conscientious teachers. His reports insist again and again upon the necessity of professional fitness on the part of instructors in every grade, and therefore upon the paramount importance of Normal Schools, Teachers' 36 JOHN HANCOCK. Institutes, and, above all, the habit of reading. One of his reports strenuously recommends the city teachers to make a systematic study of the science of education; and counsels every teacher to possess himself of a collec- tion of reference books. The principal test that he would apply to ascertain the character and culture of teachers and pupils is the test of a liberal, but pointed and sug- gestive, written examination. It has been said that Dr. Hancock pursued a very conservative course in the discharge of his duties as Superintendent of the Cincinnati Schools. If by this is meant that he was moderate and deliberate in his pro- cedure, it is true ; but it would not be fair to charge him with that sort of conservatism which clings to the dead past and seeks to compromise with the living future. I should say he was decidedly progressive. The period of his superintendency fell in a time of much political, religious and social agitation. One of the " burning questions," that excited the Board of Education, and the city of Cincinnati, while he was in office, was the memorable one of the Bible in the Public Schools. The outcome of the long battle, as all the world knows, was the adoption of a rule forbidding the reading of the Scrip- ture in the Schools. In this contest the Superintendent's sympathies were not with the majority of the Board ; — he thought the Bible should be retained, — and perhaps it is owing to the decided position he took against its removal that many considered him a strict conservative. In June, 1^74, Mr. Hancock was succeeded in office by Dr. John B. Peaslee. 37 JOINS CINCINNATI LITERARY CLUB. In 1867, Mr. Hancock joined the Cincinnati Literary Club, a society organized in 1849, which still exists and has ever maintained a very high rank as regards member- ship, and the tone of its literary and social exercises. It is exclusively a gentlemen's club, of limited numbers, with elegant and rather expensive appointments, and holds its delightful meetings regularly every Saturday night. Mr. Hancock held his membership in this charm- ing club during the whole period of his Superintendency of the Cincinnati Schools ; was a regular attendant upon its meetings, and took part in all its privileges and pleasures. The records of the Club show that he contributed at least ten papers to its programs, either through its Budget or as appointed essay reader, with title and time of presentation as follows: American Humorists, February 29, 1868; The New Education, May I, 1869; The Oldfashioned Schoolmaster, January 22, 1870; Conversation, December 17, 1870; The School- master, February i, 1873; The Statesman's Manual, February 22, 1873 ; The Cincinnati University, January 31, 1874; Our Hundredth Birthday, January 4, 1876; Civilization and Humor, January 29, 1876 ; Glimpses from the Greek, a poem. May 30, 1885. For the year 1874-5, ^^- Hancock was president of the Literary Club. How keenly he relished the associations of the Club, is attested by a passage from one of his unconstrained letters, written to Prof. E. S. Cox, the Superintendent of the Schools of Portsmouth, Ohio, November i, 1887. The letter says: ** Saturday night I ran down to Cincin- nati (from Chillicothe) to attend the anniversary of the Literary Club. This Club is unique among the clubs of 38 JOHN HANCOCK. the world, and has included in its membership nearly all the distinguished people of South-western Ohio, — and some not so distinguished. Among the former may be mentioned Chase, Hayes, Hoadley, Halstead, Noyes, Spofford, Librarian of Congress, Donn Piatt, J. J. Piatt, Judge Taft, General Pope, etc. If I know myself, I have as little of the snob about me as any man living ; yet' I must confess that there is to me a particular charm in the society of highly cultivated gentlemen, — especially of young men, — people whose courtesy fits like a tailor- made coat, and not as though it were made for another man. Such people are sometimes called aristocrats by envious outsiders. But whatever they may be called, they are admirable fellows. I have not been at a meet- ing before for several years, and the hearty reception by old friends, made me feel as though I was the owner of a corner in Elysium.'* TEN YEARS IN DAYTON. It is unnecessary to record the details of Dr. Hancock's career as Superintendent of the Dayton Schools. Much of his work was necessarily in the ordinary routine which the best usage in educational supervision has established in the leading cities of Ohio. Yet he was little disposed to run the educational car in old ruts, and ever and anon he put his strong shoulder to the wheel to urge usage in the direction of well-considered reform. He tried some experiments in Dayton, the purpose of which was to ascertain the actual contents of children's minds. His Reports, though similar in their leading doctrines to those he had produced in Cincinnati, were new in subject TEN YEARS IN DAYTON. 39 matter, and wisely adapted to the conditions of his changed field of action. In June, 1877, Dr. W. D. Henkle, then editor of the Ohio Educational Monthly, said, in a review, ''The Report of the Dayton Schools is a valuable document. It has several features that are new to us. It is not necessary to say that Superintendent Hancock discusses the topics selected by him with his accustomed vigor." Calling attention to the fact stated in the Report that *'the whole number of cases of tardiness in the year did not average one for each pupil," Henkle remarks that "such a result is astonishing." In another number of the Monthly, giving an account of an Institute which he had just attended in Dayton, Mr. Henkle said, "Super- intendent Hancock resolved to depart from the usual routine and introduced some new features. In this he was successful." Dr. Hancock was Superintendent of the Dayton Schools for ten years, from 1874 to 1884, under Repub- lican city rule, and he- was retired, by a strictly party vote, when a Democratic Board came into political power. He was succeeded by Dr. J. J. Burns. On the occasion of Dr. Hancock's retirement from the Superintendency, a number of gentlemen, who had been members of the School Board in the course of his incumbency, gave him a banquet, and took the oppor- tunity to compliment him in cordial speeches, which were fully reported in the daily Journal. Mr. Robert W. Steele, as chairman of the meeting, gave expression to the general feeling in an address, part of which is here reproduced. On taking the chair Mr. Steele said: ** We have met in this social way as members of the 40 JOHN HANCOCK. Board of Education, past and present, to give expression to our regard for Dr. John Hancock as a man and as the Superintendent of our public schools. Dr. Hancock may look back with proud satisfaction to his ten years of labor in Dayton. It might well satisfy the laudable ambition of any man to be permitted for so long a time to impress and mould the character of thousands of youth and children. As members of the Board of Education, associated with him at various times in his work, we have had the best means of knowing how faithfully and efficiently he has discharged the duties of his office. He has not been a mere office Superintendent, but has given his whole time during school hours to personal supervision of the daily work of the schoolroom. While an excellent general system of instruction has been adhered to, rigid rules have not been enforced to crush out the individuality of teachers. He has insisted on good work, but has been content when it has been accomplished in whatever manner. He has harmonized the discordant elements in our schools, and during his administration peace and good will have characterized all the intercourse between superintendent and teachers. But best of all, he has exerted a beneficent influence on our schools by the purity of his character. On all moral questions he has given no doubtful sound. No boy in our schools could point to his example as an excuse for the slightest departure from the purest morality. In addition to his work in the schools he has ever been a public-spirited citizen. No effort to advance the intellectual and moral culture of the community has failed to enlist his warm sympathy and support. With such an appreciation of your character and TEN YEARS IN DAYTON. 41 work, you, Dr. Hancock, need no assurance from us that we deeply regret your removal from our midst. A man of national reputation in your profession, you have reflected honor on our city by your residence here, and have made our schools widely known for their excellence. A generous, warm-hearted friend, we shall miss you in all the walks of life. Our earnest good wishes for your prosperity and success will follow you to your new field of labor. You need not seek a place to work, for places will seek you. We envy the city that shall secure for superintendent of its schools a man of your ability and ripe experience. What is our great loss will be the great gain of that city." Thrown out of employment by the political change we have mentioned. Dr. Hancock entered upon an enforced vacation of a year. It was the only year of his life, since he began the work of teaching, in which he had no regular work to do. The power of habit had so fixed upon him the expectation and performance of set duties, that, when the schools opened in the autumn of 1884, he was at a loss what to do with himself. The strange, unwonted experience of having nothing in particular to do, produced novel sensations. At first he hardly knew whether he had stepped into a vacuum, or into a new atmosphere vital with exhilarat- ing qualities. He wrote to a familiar friend, ** I wish you would tell me how to put in leisure time to the best advantage. I do nothing — that is of business profit — and still I seem to be about as busy as I did when I had regular employment. I do some more reading, but not so much more as 1 expected. Yet life has put on other colors, and somehow I feel freer, — and I am sure you will not mistake me when I say manlier, — than when I was 42 * JOHN HANCOCK. tramping in the old bark mill round. Variety of employ- ment and scene seems to me to be the essence of the higher life.'* Among the books that he read in this fallow period were Pascal's '' Pensles," " Obiter Dicta," James Payn's ''Literary Recollections," Cross's "Life of George Eliot," Mrs. Field's ''Reminiscences of Emer- son," and Matthew Arnold's " Essays in Criticism." He found stimulation also in Professor Seely's three articles on Goethe, in the Cotemporary Review. He did some writing, in the way of lectures, and contributions for the Chicago Present Age, and other periodicals. The meeting of the National Association of July, 1884, he enjoyed to the top of his bent. "We had the grandest education meeting at Madison," he writes, "ever held on this continent, perhaps in the world. In both num- bers and quality it was inspiring." Dr. Hancock was appointed in November, 1884, by State School Commissioner Brown, to assist in preparing the Ohio Education Exhibit, for the World's Fair at New Orleans ; and he spent several weeks in New Orleans, in charge of the interests of his State. An article of several pages, in the June number of the Ohio Educa- tional Monthly, gives his report of the "Ohio Exhibit." As time wore on, and no prospect of satisfactory regular employment opened before him, Dr. Hancock, in spite of his optimistic nature, yielded to depression. He grew tired of rest, and sighed even to be tramping once more in the " old bark mill round." " I am still drifting. I know not yet what I shall be, nor where," he said despondently. Again, to one who had expressed a shrinking dread of returning to the wearing drudgery of the school-room, to be ground in a "mill of boys," he wrote, in April, 1885, "There are worse things than SUPERINTENDENT IN CHILLICOTHE. 43 being ground in a mill of boys, and one is to have nothing to do when you need something to do." At last a door opened. Superintendent William Richardson retired from the Chillicothe schools to take a place in Sedalia, Missouri, and Dr. Hancock was called to fill the vacancy. SUPERINTENDENT IN CHILLICOTHE. In the summer of 1885, Dr. Hancock received a unanimous call to take charge of the schools of Chilli- cothe, the old capital of Ohio. This call was due in large measure to the influence of Hon. B. F. Stone, a man of vigorous intellect and of wide knowledge of educators and educational work. Dr. Hancock remained in charge of the Chillicothe schools until the winter of 1889, when he retired to accept an appointment to the office of State School Commissioner. 1 am indebted to his successor in Chilli- cothe, Superintendent E. S. Cox, for a succinct estimate of Dr. Hancock's character, and his educational services in Chillicothe. Professor Cox writes, '* He left every- where on the school system of Chillicothe the marks of a large and liberal intelligence. He was not a mere instrumental superintendent, but a man of a real power who uplifted whatever he touched. Whether considered as an educator or a man, what impressed one most was, I think, his noble breadth of spirit. To the last he remained untouched by professional pedantries, and his mind was always open to the best thought of his time. Under the supervision of such a man, no system of schools could long remain mean or narrow, and I think every teacher under his charge was constantly stimulated to higher work by his inspiring example. I have never 44 JOHN HANCOCK. known any man who was more loved and honored by his teachers and by his Board of Education." These warm expressions of Professor Cox are fully borne out by the general testimony of Chillicothe people, young and old, and by the city newspapers of whatever party. The Chillicothe Leader, for example, used the following most emphatic language: **Dr. Hancock was the best friend the teachers of the Chillicothe public schools ever had; he was the best friend the scholars of the public schools ever had ; he was the best friend the Board of Education ever had." The feeling of the citizens towards him is well expressed in the words of an accomplished and influential lady of Chillicothe, Mrs. M. C. Nipgen, who writes: '*How universally was he admired for his great, logical mind ; how much beloved for his tender, sympathetic heart ! His capacities were many, and he used them; his opportunities great, and he employed them. He was a true man, one of God's noblemen, faithful and zealous in duty, just, gen- erous, — a man among ten thousand." If we inquire by what means it was, — by what art this unostentatious man won the confidence and liking of so many men, women and children, in so short a time, the answer is not hard to give. He used *' no art at all." Ripe and wise and good-hearted, he gave himself up simply and wholly to his duty. He served the com- munity. He mixed with the people. He took part in the affairs of the tov/n, got acquainted with families, went to church, aided the libraries, founded night schools and reading circles, joined in the services of Decoration Day. He took a real interest in his work and in his "charge." What a " pastorate " is that 1 — ^the flock that a Superintendent of a city school shepherds. In a letter SUPERINTENDENT IN CHILLICOTHE. 45 to Professor Cox, dated October 23, 1888, Hancock speaks of a visit he made to Columbus for the encourage- ment of some Chillicothe boys who had gone to college. **We have quite a number of students in the University there," he explains, **who were writing home in a discouraged sort of way. So I concluded to run up and see whether I couldn't put them into a happier frame of mind. This I think I succeeded in doing. They are an excellent lot of boys, likely to do well, if they get the right start." Such disinterested services as this, simple though they seem, are the kind that endear men to their fellows and win lasting gratitude. Many men are ready to promise help, and forget the promise ; or to do a good turn with the implied expectation that an equivalent shall be rendered; but how few volunteer a helping hand, or seek opportunities of doing secret good to others without a thought of putting them under obligation. John Hancock was one of the few. He was always assisting others in a practical way by word and deed. In looking over the shower of telegrams and letters of condolence that came from everywhere to Mrs. Hancock after her husband's death, I have been surprised at the number that make tearful acknowledgment of kindnesses received from this generous and magnanimous man. It adds to the pathos and beauty of these messages that many of them are from comparatively humble sources — from those who found a friend in time of need, and who could pay only in the coin of love. Young teachers — old teachers, too, but especially young teachers — struggling to obtain a secure position were often put in the way of prosperity by Dr. Hancock's influence, provided he felt quite sure of their uprightness and professional fitness. His cheerful and hopeful dis- 46 JOHN HANCOCK. position prompted him to lift the burden of despondency from those whom he discovered to be cast down by any sort of trouble, physical, pecuniary or mental. His sun- shine dispelled the clouds. We have seen how he went up to Columbus to put the college boys in a ** better frame of mind." The medicine of his cheering words was not infrequently administered to men and women as well as to boys and girls, though not obtrusively or officiously. To a personal friend of his in eastern Ohio, — a Superintendent temporarily out of a situation, and therefore dejected, — he wrote, in October, 1888 : ''Don't begin to distress yourself. Such feelings are apt to creep over one situated as you are. I speak from experience. The year I was out of employment I often found myself dropping into the belief that I was a first- class humbug, and always had been. If it hadn't been for assurances which occasionally came from friends in whom I had confidence, I don't know to what depths of wretchedness I might have fallen. Keep out of that Slough of Despond." Dr. Hancock's habitual conduct in Chillicothe seems to have been even more than usually controlled by the guidance of the golden rule. "Help ye one another" was the text that he obeyed from principle and from impulse. This impelled him to undertake more work than he should have done. He wrote to Professor Cox, in February, 1888 : "I am likely to have the duties of a County Examiner thrust upon me. Think of three examiners being rolled into one ! — State, City, County, — ^there's honor for you ! And now comes General Hurst, and commissions me as County Commissioner for the State Centennial. But this honor I must put aside. I shall have to draw the line somewhere. Iron, as I have STATE SCHOOL COMMISSIONER. 47 generally thought myself to be, — even iron may be crushed. I won't neglect my regular duties in the smallest degree for any outside work." STATE SCHOOL COMMISSIONER. Dr. Hancock's field of labor was transferred from the old Capital to the new, in the autumn of 1888. Hon. Eli T. Tappan, Commissioner of Common Schools, died, in office, of heart disease, resulting in brain paralysis, October 23, 1888; and Governor Foraker appointed Dr. Hancock to fill out the term which expired the second Monday in July, 1890. At the Republican Convention held in Columbus, January 26, 1889, Dr. Hancock was nominated to succeed himself, and he was elected in the following November, for the regular term to expire in July, 1893. He discharged the duties of the office until the date of his death, June 2, 1891, something over two years and seven months. Within that time he issued three Reports, being the 35th, 36th and 37th Annual Reports of the State Commissioner to the General Assembly of Ohio, for the years 1888, 1889 and 1890, The First Report of Commissioner Hancock, trans- mitted to Governor J. B. Foraker, March 2, 1889, is taken up mainly with a biographical sketch of Dr. Eli Todd Tappan. It contains, also, **as a specimen of Dr. Tappan's style of thought, and as a fresh and vigorous discussion of an important educational topic, his inaugural address as President of the National Education Associa- tion, delivered at Saratoga Springs, July 9, 1883." Having thus paid sincere, delicate and merited respect and honor to his predecessor. Dr. Hancock modestly fore- casts his own purposes in a brief view of the history of 48 JOHN HANCOCK. school legislation in Ohio, closing with the recommenda- tion of certain desirable changes in the law, especially in regard to one of his favorite measures; viz.. County School Supervision. The spirit, and the essential substance of the ideas put forward in this his first State document are couched in the following extract : ** What our school system needs most is reorganiza- tion on a definite and comprehensive plan. What would approximate a perfect system, according to my judgment, would be to make the township the educational unit, with its Board and its Superintendent. Above this should be a County Board, composed of representatives from the Township Boards, the duty of which should be to appoint a superintendent who should be responsible to it for the proper discharge of the duties of his office. And at the head of all, a State Board of Education, having general supervision of the whole system. Substantially, this ii> the system under which the States making greatest progress in educational affairs are working. Such a system provides for effective administrative force and for thorough supervision of school work at every point. The Ohio Teachers' Association embraces in its membership a public-spirited and zealous class of work- ers. It is a large force in shaping opinion on educational matters, and is of the utmost benefit to the profession of teaching, and, through that profession, to the State at large. All the multiform questions pertaining to education are discussed in its meetings by our ablest educators. The annual meeting held at Sandusky, last July, was STATE SCHOOL COMMISSIONER. 49 noted for the unusual excellence of the papers read and the discussions thereon. A comparatively new organization, the State Associa- tion of Examiners, is also exercising a direct and health- ful influence over the school work." The Report for 1889 enlarges on the suggestions made the year before. Perhaps the most significant passage in the Report is that which endorses the law for compulsory education, a measure urged by Mr. Hancock as long ago as 1870, when he was Superintendent of the Schools of Cincinnati. He says, ''The most striking advanced step in school legislation made in Ohio, within the last quarter of a century, was the enactment, last winter, of the Compulsory Education Law." His com- ments on this topic are followed by a clear and vigorous discussion of the several subjects : Organization of the School System ; Supervision ; Permanency of the Teacher's Position ; Examination of Teachers ; Training Teachers; Teachers' Associations; Continuance of Schools ; State Board of Examiners ; Manual Training. It would be difficult to find sounder or more sensibly expressed views on the examination and training of teachers, than those laid down in Dr. Hancock's Report of 1889, — the views of a thoughtful educator given deliberately, after mature reflection corrected by obser- vation and experience. The Report for 1890, — Dr. Hancock's last, — begins with a brief essay on Higher Education, and this is followed by the topics. College Statistics ; High Schools ; Number of Pupils in the Public Schools; School Houses; The Compulsory Law; County Boards of Examiners, etc. To the Report for 1889 are appended the Compulsory Law, the noted School Book Law, and other additions 50 JOHN HANCOCK. and amendments to the School Laws of Ohio passed by the Sixty-ninth General Assembly ; and, to that of 1890, Dr. E. E. White's Plans of Adjusting High School and College Courses of Study in Ohio ; and other matter. These Annual Reports, though they represent a vast deal of painstaking labor, and indicate the scope and character of the office duties devolved upon the Commis- sioner by the issues of the times, do not acquaint us fully with the tasks and responsibilities of his onerous position. It was said of Dr. Hancock, in a prominent print, that '*he was probably the most competent and successful, as well as the most popular. Commissioner of Common Schools Ohio has ever possessed. It is doubt- ful whether any other man in the State had the knowl- edge of the theory and practice of the Public School System of the State which he possessed." This may be an exaggerated statement, yet certainly no prominent educator will deny that the right man was in the right place when John Hancock entered the State-house as head of the department of Public Schools. His fitness, and the recognition of it, by State officers, teachers and people, entailed on him an enormous amount of work that a less prominent and popular incumbent might have escaped. A thousand demands were made upon his time and strength. The body of his correspondence was necessarily increased. The drains upon his social and his literary resources were numerous. If he had been overtaxed by duties at Chillicothe, the demands of his new position at Columbus were no less exacting. Far from being a sinecure, the Commissioner's office, with its disgracefully meager salary, proved to him, though a seat of honor, a post of responsibility, care and never- ending activity. To his successor in Chillicothe he STATE SCHOOL COMMISSIONER. 51 wrote, February 12, 1890, "I appreciate what you say as to leisure being an important factor of a full life. But how are you going to get any considerable amount of it when you have any number of friends pushing at your back and yelling in your ears : * Don't stop ! go ahead ! Do ! Do !' (I don't know whether those d's ought to be capitals or not.) So, in consequence of this shoving process I had to work right along — all the time I had la grippe — writing up my report, — which is now, thank fortune, in the hands of the printer. * * * I do not find time to read anything in the literary line. I am drying up to such an extent that I am expecting soon to hear my brains rattle in my skull as I walk. * * ^ Would you wonder if I sometimes felt tired ? Yet, when I am entirely well, I do not." On May 13, 1890, he wrote to the same correspondent, **I tire of these skirmishing expeditions among country schools, but haven't the moral heroism to refuse invitations." And again, in November, 1890, " I am induced to think this office holds one up to routine with a firmer grasp than does the work of Superintendent of Schools. It is only by a wrenching process that I can get away from it to write a friendly letter." And again, in December of the same year, "Last evening I wrote the final sentence of my Report, and what a relief it was ! But the relief would be greater were it not that I must plunge into work immediately on the Report of the School Book Board (confound its 'picture'!) for the meeting of the General Assembly. I should like to present in that about all the facts in regard to the making of text-books that can be procured, so ,that if the Legislature should wish to take further action in the matter, it may do so with some intelli- 52 JOHN HANCOCK. gence. So I see nothing but hard work before me for the next two months ; but you know I am getting used to that." In a similar strain of mingled weariness and energy, Dr. Hancock sent out his occasional greeting to other friends, — half apologizing for his enforced neglect of social recreations. To the recorder of these lines he wrote " I spend most of my waking hours in a cell of the stone jail called a State House." The genial tone, and the irresistible tendency to relieve the pressure of serious business by the buoyant counter-force of mirth and humor, remained with him to the end. One of his letters, dashed off in a rollicking mood, in November 1890, closes with this droll piece of self-burlesque: *M am engaged in writing up my Annual Report. Wait till you get that, ' me boy!' There you will fmd excellence blooming ! There you will fmd thoughts as large as California pumpkins ! There you will fmd strength and delicacy of style and refinement of sentiment ! There you will find, you will fmd — Hancock, John. (I can throw off that kind of humor all day with one hand tied behind me.) Please to make my graceful bow to the Madame and to each and every of the scions of a noble house. And believe me — although a partially forlorn and shipwrecked brother — Yours always, Hancock John." connection with the ohio teachers' association. Dr. Hancock joined the Ohio Teachers' Association at its fourth annual session in 1852, and from that date to 1890, inclusive, attended all its meetings except two. OHIO TEACHERS' ASSOCIATION. 53 At the sixth annual meeting, in Columbus, December 28, 29, 30, 1853, he was Secretary pro tern. Joseph Ray, the mathematician, then Principal of Woodward High School, Cincinnati, was President of the Association ; and among those in attendance were Lorin Andrews, Alfred Holbrook, Wm. D. Henkle, E. E. White, Dr. Cal- vin Cutter, the physiologist, and Alphonzo Wood, the botanist. Horace Mann delivered the annual address. The meeting was held in the old City Hall. Dr. Find- ley, alluding to this occasion as being the first on which he met Hancock, says, *'He was in the ante-room, wait- ing, with considerable perturbation, as I remember, to be called to read what was probably his first paper before the Association." The subject of this paper was the "Position and Duties of Teachers." The seventh annual meeting of the Association con- vened at Cincinnati, and Mr. Hancock, being the regular Secretary, had much to do with the business. The Min- utes record that, on behalf of the teachers and trustees of the Public Schools of Cincinnati, he invited the mem- bers to attend a festival at Greenwood Hall, in the Mechanics' Institute Building. In the meeting of 1855, held at Columbus, Hancock was very active, especially in the advocacy of State legislation and support for Normal Schools. He was one of the earliest friends of the Hopedale Normal School and its founders, and one of the organizers of the South- western State Normal School Association, formed at Oxford, Ohio, in August, 1855, under the auspices of which the South-Western State Normal School, now Normal University, was started, at Lebanon, November 17, 1855, under the control of Alfred Holbrook. We find Hancock supporting a resolution, offered by Holbrook, in 54 JOHN HANCOCK. favor of Normal Schools. He was chosen Chairman of the Executive Committee, an office which he held for several years. At the tenth annual meeting, Columbus, December 29, 1857, Hancock made himself felt as a vigorous force, participating in all the debates. The record tells that he moved that the report of James A. Garfield, on the "Self-reporting System," be taken up. This was a time in which Horace Mann, by his eloquent insistency on the moral correctness of the ''Code of Honor," or self- reporting, as practiced at Antioch College, had created an intense general interest in the subject. The discus- sion, a very radical and stimulating one, was resumed by the State Association, in 1858, at the meeting held in Delaware. Mr. Hancock opposed the ''Self-reporting System," on the ground that it provokes pupils to falsehood. The meeting of 1859 was held in Dayton, July 6 and 7, and the President, Mr. Cowdery, being absent, Mr. Hancock, Vice-President, occupied the chair during its sessions. He delivered an address on the "Diffusion of Knowledge," which was published in the Ohio School Journal of November, 1859. The Association promoted him to the presidency of their body in 1859; and, at the next meeting, the twelfth annual, held at Newark, he delivered an able inaugural, which may be read in the School Journal for August, i860. This address is in its author's best vein, — a characteristic discussion of the educational topics of the day. It derives special historic interest from a passage eulogizing Horace Mann, who died at Yellow Springs, August 2, 1859. From the beau- tiful tribute which Hancock paid to the famous educator, I quote a few sentences : " Terribly in earnest, he worked OHIO TEACHERS* ASSOCIATION. 55 with terrible and unsparing energy, and fell, as every true warrior would wish to fall, with his armor on. His ideal of manhood was a grand and noble one, and he endeavored to live it in his own person. None has ever set forth its beauties in more eloquent terms, or succeeded better in implanting in the hearts of young men a desire to rise into the regions of a pure and ennobled activity. The greatest educator the New World has produced, his influence on American instruction will last while time endures.'* To give, in detail, the history of Dr. Hancock's participation in the proceedings of the Ohio Teachers' Association-, for the forty years in which he was a prominent and always active member of it, would require a small volume. Of the many papers which he read before it, mention may be made of that on ''The High School Question," 1874; that on "What Studies should be Required below the High School," 1878; and that on **The Examination of Teachers," read at Akron, in 1887. At the Toledo meeting of 1889, he responded to the Mayor's speech of greeting, and read a noble and generous tribute to his friend and predecessor. Commis- sioner Eli Todd Tappan. The part he took in the meeting at Lakeside, in July, 1890,— the last State Convention he was permitted to attend, — was varied and energetic. Scarcely a paper was presented for public consideration, that he did not discuss with wise and discriminating judgment, yet with the ardor and enthusiasm of earnest conviction. He spoke with the confidence of a veteran who had passed through every experience that the field of common school education can afford, from subordinate teacher in a district school to State School Commissioner. But not an arrogant 56 JOHN HANCOCK. word, not a presumptuous syllable, escaped his lips during those three genial days, July i, 2 and 3, in which he moved among his fellow teachers, conscious indeed of his right and duty to counsel and advise ; not so much by virtue of his office, as from a perfect knowledge of the problems in discussion, and an absolute devotion to the best interests of the commonwealth in matters educa- tional. There was no slightest indication of break or decay of body or mind in what he did or said, in those his last days of mingling, as it proved, with his co-workers in the familiar old Association, endeared by so many years of memory. Commenting on Mr. Jack- son's paper on "The Use and Abuse of Methods," he remarked, how forcibly, and with what truth of truth: ''Nobody can make anything out of a method unless he sees whither that method tends, and recognizes that there is a spirit in the child that must be touched and reached by the method. But if he will recognize that we are striving to reach the soul of the boy or the girl and stir it as it has never been stirred before, then his method is a good one. That is the way all the great teachers have done. Our pupils go through the Normal Schools and they learn methods, but in the end they are entirely mechanical, because the teachers fail to recognize whither they all tend." Again, in discussing Mr. Baker's paper on "The Value of a Library in Connection with School Work," how animated and suggestive his little off-hand speech ! "This is an old, old story for me to talk upon," he began. " There is a problem connected with this teach- ing of literature that is not yet by any means solved, and it is, How shall they (to use Carlyle's expression) give warmth who have no live coal in their own bosoms ? OHIO TEACHERS' ASSOCIATION. 57 The gentleman before me spoke of the difficulty of teaching literature to classes, some members of which have never read a book. There are plenty of teachers in Ohio that have never read a book. They are found in every county of the State. Now how shall they give instruction in literature ? How shall they make literature attractive to those who have not any natural taste for it ? There are always in every class some who inherit a love for books. It is a love that never ceases, constantly reaching out for more in that direction. You do not need to give them any attention, except to direct that love to proper objects. But the majority in the classes in schools are not of that character. They have not that inherent love for the masterpieces of literature. They have no love for art. They can not see nature. ' How shall we give them that love, unless we have something of it ourselves ? We must begin solving this problem at the teachers' end of it. We can not solve it by going to the pupils. I am discouraged when I see the amount of ignorance among teachers in this respect. Of course, there are none of that class of teachers in this Association. They do not go to Associations; they do not go to Institutes. They live in secluded places, perhaps, and yet I could tell of incidents in my own experience, as a member of a Board of Examiners, where one of the teachers in one of the principal cities of Ohio could not answer a single one of my questions in English literature. I asked him questions in general history, and the past might never have been, so far as he was concerned. But there is a vast improvement being made, and you will not find such men any longer in the schools of Ohio. I find now young men and young women everywhere who are enthusiastic in this. They may not have read 58 JOHN HANCOCK. much, but they have caught the sweet infection of knowledge and they are going to do something, not alone for themselves, — but they are going to do for those they are called upon to instruct, — and we shall have built up in this State of ours a little mountain upon which shall be a shining light to all around, and Ve are going to have that to-morrow." The words which I have quoted, on a favorite topic of his, were among the last uttered by Dr. Han- cock before the Ohio Teachers' Association. It was set for him to appear on the program of 1 891, at Chau- tauqua, and he was to open the discussion on the ques- tion, '' What Further Work is there for the State Associ- ation ?" He fell at his post of duty a month before the Chautauqua meeting convened. The last work that he could do for the Association, and for the cause of educa- tion, was to die in the service. THE OHIO TEACHERS' READING CIRCLE. Closely related to the State Association, if not an integral part of it, is the Ohio Teachers' Reading Circle, organized by members of the Association at Chautau- qua, July 3, 1883, mainly by the exertions of Mrs. Delia Lathrop Williams, of Delaware, Ohio, who has ever since been at the head of its Board of Control. Mrs. Williams prepared the original report or plan upon which the Circle was organized, being chairman of a Committee of three to which the drafting of the report was en- trusted. The two other members of the Committee were Dr. John Hancock and Hon. J. J. Burns. The zeal for culture which impelled Dr. Hancock to cooperate in the founding of the Reading Circle, kept THE OHIO TEACHERS' READING CIRCLE. 59 alive his interest in its growth and prosperity. An ever active member of its Board of Control, he employed every means within his reach to encourage and assist its ben- eficent operation. Indeed he took the liveliest satisfac- tion in the contemplation of its manifest good results, for if he had a *' hobby," it was literature and reading. To the direct influence of the pedagogical department in the course of reading of the Circle, he ascribed a marked improvement, noticeable by the State Board of Examiners, in the qualifications of applicants for certifi- cates. Discussing the value of libraries as an educa- tional means, at the meeting of the State Association in 1890, he said, ''If there is any one thing above another that I am specially proud of besides the Truant Law, it is that in Ohio has originated the idea of having a great Reading Circle that shall bring within its bounds hundreds and thousands of teachers, so that they are beginning to taste more of the sweets of literature. We must encourage this reading among teachers themselves. Get into their hands the best books, and get into their hearts the love for them, and the remainder of the problem will be very easy. Inspiration will go out of every pore of them, as it were, and we shall gradually uplift the communities of this State and spread abroad this in- fluence from Ohio, as a central State, all over this Union. Every one of us, to bring' this about, is to do as the young gentleman has been doing in his High School, and this lady who read the paper. Let us do this sort of work, and we can accomplish any purpose which we undertake." It was in furtherance of the higher objects of the Reading Circle, that Dr. Hancock was induced, in 1886, to prepare a booklet of ** Selections from Wordsworth, 6o JOHN HANCOCK, with a Brief Sketch of his Life," his only venture in authorship, aside from strictly professional Reports and the like. The ''Selections," published by Robert Clarke & Co., Cincinnati, 1886, formed part of the literary course for the years 1886-7. The introductory ''sketch " is an admirably clear account of Wordsworth, with a critical estimate of his theory and practice of poetry. The dozen selections which follow, covering some thirty pages, are of the noblest strain, beginning with the mag- nificent Ode on Immortality, and closing with the great Sonnet on Milton. SERVICES IN THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION. The loving esteem in which Dr. Hancock was held by his fellow members in the National Educational Associa- tion, the Council, and the Round Table, is attested by the report of the action of the Memorial meeting of the Council, July 10, 1891, at Toronto, which is appended to this Memoir. Dr. Hancock became a member of the National Asso- ciation at its second annual meeting held in Cincinnati, at Smith & Nixon's Hall, beginning July 11, 1858. Dr. Z. Richards was President of the Association in that year, and was succeeded by A. J. Rickoff. In 1871, Dr. Han- cock was chosen Treasurer of the Association, for the term of four years. He became a life member in 1876. He was elected President at the Louisville meeting in 1877. The Association held no meeting in 1878, and hence Dr. Hancock did not serve until the Philadelphia meeting, 1879, over which he presided with great accep- tance. He was one of the original merfibers of the National SERVICES IN THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION. 6l Council, being present at its organization at Chautauqua, in 1880. Dr. Hancock was a regular attendant upon the meet- ings of these organizations, and an active participant in their work. Among the contributions which he made to the National literature of education, may be mentioned his inaugural address at Philadelphia, in 1879; a paper on ** School Supervision in the United States Compared with Supervision in Other Countries," read at Chicago, in 1887; ^ ** Tribute to Dr. E. T. Tappan," delivered in 1889, at Nashville, and a paper on ** Coeducation," given at St. Paul, in 1891. Another rather informal, yet by no means unimpor- tant, educational junto to which Dr. Hancock belonged, was that known as the Round Table, of which, one of the members. Dr. Rickoff, furnishes a brief account. He says: ** While Mr. Hancock was Superintendent of the Cincinnati Schools, the Round Table Convention was first assembled. It was mainly through the active inter- est of Dr. W. T. Harris, then Superintendent of the Schools of St. Louis, that Mr. Hancock, Mr. Pickard, of Chicago, and I (then of Cleveland) were called together annually in the fall to discuss the problems of adminis- tration which particularly affected the larger cities in which we were severally interested. We had no Constitution and no officers, but engaging a parlor in the hotel in which we had agreed to meet, we were accus- tomed to spend the greater part of the day and all the evening — sometimes till late at night for two or three successive days — in discussing principles of education ; methods of teaching ; organization and seating of classes ; the best nomenclature for the several grades ; the influence of parochial schools ; the best method of regu- 62 JOHN HANCOCK. lating the salaries of teachers ; the building of school- houses; plans of ventilation, etc., etc. In fact no subject pertaining to the organization or management of schools was ever considered as foreign to the legitimate purposes of our. Convention. Mr. Stevenson, of Columbus, and Mr. Shortridge, of Indianapolis, sometimes joined us, but they were not so regular in attendance as the rest of us. Mr. Hancock and Mr. Harris were most valuable mem- bers. They were the readiest to raise questions for con- sideration, and most interesting and instructive in their discussion. Though it called together so few, and though its proceedings were never reported to the press, the influence of this Association over the schools of the West has been said to have been valuable : certainly it was not without great advantage to those who attended, and to the school systems which they represented. It was our rule to spend the morning of each day in visiting the schools of the city where we met. Thus, each one had an opportunity to study the work done by the others, and substantial uniformity was the result. The united influence of the larger cities doubtless produced a good degree of uniformity in the smaller ones, and in this way perhaps the good results did not stop with the schools of which we had charge." DR. HANCOCK'S WRITINGS FOR EDUCATIONAL JOURNALS, AS EDITOR OR CONTRIBUTOR. The Ohio School Journal — now The Ohio Educa- tional Monthly and National Teacher — was, perhaps, the first educational publication for which Mr. Hancock wrote. This well known periodical was started in 1852, and of the forty volumes which have been issued, there AS EDITOR OR CONTRIBUTOR. 63 is not one that does not mention the name of John Hancock; and many of its pages are occupied with matter from his prolific pen. Besides numerous addresses, papers and reports of his, forming part of the proceedings of the State Teachers' Association, or of other public educational bodies, the Journal contains many contribu- tions sent by him, from time to time, on subjects mainly professional. In March, 1856, was published in the columns of the Journal an article entitled, '^The Present Condition of Education." This was followed, in 1857, by an article on "New Methods." The July number of Volume VII., 1858, contains a very interesting paper by Mr. Hancock called, ''Free Books," describing the Public Library of Cincinnati, and closing with the sentence: ''Free Schools and Free Books are the two premises of a syllogism, and a Free People the inevitable conclusion." The June number of Volume VIII., 1859, preserves one of his humorous productions, a rollicking piece, of four pages, entitled, "Not an Article," a defense of mirth and laughter in general, and enjoining pleasantry upon the schoolmaster as a duty. This was a string upon which Hancock was wont to play most musically. He was fond of a joke, and always jocular. One of his whimsical proposals, often announced with much solemn- ity, was to prepare a " Book of Conundrums and Funny Jests, for use in the Common Schools," with a " Key," by means of which the unwittiest teacher might explain the obscurest points in the jokes ! The Educational Monthly for May, i860, prints an article from Hancock, bearing the title " Our Homes," a plea for house decoration; and the December number has a noble and eloquent contribution from the same source, headed, " Will it Pay.?" The question is applied 64 JOHN HANCOCK. to the public school system, and demonstrates the weak- ness of a parsimonious policy in school affairs, and shows conclusively how inestimable to the State is the value of education and culture. In January, i860, Mr. Elias Longley, of Cincinnati, began the publication of the Journal of Progress in Education and Social Improvement, a monthly journal, of which Hancock became chief editor, without relin- quishing any of his duties as Principal of the First Intermediate School. The Journal of Progress was, as its name would suggest, a wide-awake and lively periodical, though short-lived, for it was abandoned in September, 1861, on account of business disturbances caused by the Civil War. The subscription list was transferred to the books of the Ohio Educational Monthly, then published at Columbus, by E. E. White and Rev. Anson Smyth. The Journal had a Phonetic Department, in the interest of the publisher, and a Mathematical Depart- ment, conducted by W. D. Henkle, at that time Professor of Mathematics in the Normal School at Lebanon, Ohio. Among the leading contributors to the periodical were : A. J. Rickoff, Principal of Cincinnati Boys' Academy ; E. E. White, late of the Portsmouth, Ohio, Union Schools ; Thomas W. Harvey, of Painesville ; Charles S. Royce, of Norwalk; R. W. Stevenson, Superintendent Public Schools, Norwalk; Edwin Regal, of Hopedale Normal School ; Dr. I. J. Allen, Superintendent of Public Schools, Cincinnati ; A. Schuyler, Principal of Seneca County Academy; Mason D. Parker, Principal Second Inter- mediate School, Cincinnati; Rev. Robert Allyn, Presi- dent of the Weslyan Female College, Cincinnati; Wm. E. Crosby, Principal of the Sixth District School, Cincin- AS EDITOR OR CONTRIBUTOR. 65 nati ; Daniel Hough, Principal of the First District School, Cincinnati; Lucius A. Hine, Author of ** Political and Social Economy," Loveland, Ohio, and W. H. Venable, Teacher in Lebanon Normal School. Mr. Hancock's buoyant and ambitious energy brought to the editorial department of the Journal of Progress, monthly, a variety of reading matter remarkable for quantity and quality. He wrote with evident enjoy- ment, and with more care and precision, perhaps, than he ever used before or after those years of special pains- taking. Every issue of the Journal contained from four to six double column pages of closely printed text from his hand. Besides a multitude of minor articles, book notices, personal items, and scraps of restated vital news, he prepared regularly a series of keen and thought- ful leaders on such subjects as, ** Teachers and Educa- tional Journals," ** Intellectual Culture," *' Boston Read- ing Books," "Self-made Men," ** Learned Men," "What Knowledge is of Most Worth." In a business para- graph headed "A Word to Our Friends," he outlines the intended character of his magazine. He says, "If our Journal has in any way approached a realization of our design, it has, in some measure, made itself the representative of living, practical thought, in the wide field of popular education, rather than of dry, pedantic forms. * * Hi * Wherever you find a real live teacher or friend of education, who does his own think- ing, and who is interested in the live thoughts of others of his brethren, show him our Journal and ask him to try it if but for six months. Pass by the old fogy school' keepers, — ^they will not be interested." The questions brought to issue by the breaking out of the Civil War were immediately taken up and discussed 66 JOHN HANCOCK. by him whose name was the same as that of the first signer of the Declaration of Independence. No hesita- tion about John Hancock in such a crisis. Sumter was bombarded April 12, 1861 ; the May number of the Journal says, in its first editorial : '* Since the bombard- ment of Fort Sumter, our people have been breathing nothing but pure oxygen. The adult pulse has beat a hundred to the minute ; that of the boys and girls, too rapidly to be computed. Patriotism is catching, and the editor has not entirely escaped the contagion. What with flag-raisings, school-teaching during 'the day, and military drill each night, he has been obliged to forego pen-work. He believes, whatever may be the final result, he and his fellow citizens generally will be the better for this present storm. They will have learned and felt what true patriotism is. Never have our people before felt how dear the old flag, under which they have so long lived and enjoyed the blessing of liberty, really was." From the time of this writing forward, the war-spirit dominated the editorial department of the Journal of Progress. We find in its pages the captions, * 'Patriot- ism in Educational Institutions," ** President Lorin Andrews a Captain," **A Visit to Camp Dennison," ''Teachers' Rifle Company," "Patriotism and the Teachers, " ' ' What are We Fighting For ? ' ' Doubtless the belligerent tone of the magazine wrought some disturbance in its subscription list. That such was the case is testified by the following epistle and comment which appeared in the editorial department for August, 1861, under the title " A Model Letter." AS EDITOR OR CONTRIBUTOR. 67 "* August i8th, 1861. MR. EDITOR :— Will you please not to send me any more of your Journals of Progress for I will not receive no more it does not fill the Bill I did not subscribe for a Political Paper. I will not read any such a thing. JOSEPH W. CLAXON.' This specimen of schoolmaster literature, which we give verbatim et literatim et punctuatim, must be from a regular *Secesher.' We are exceedingly sorry we can not reproduce for our readers Mr. Claxon's very unique chirography— there is nothing like it in Spencer's Book of Specimens. We also regret that our anti-political friend has not informed the world where he lives. Such a bright and shining light ought not to be hid under a bushel. We don't think, however, that much learning has made him mad. — J. H." During his connection with Nelson's Commercial Col- lege, in 1865-6, Mr. Hancock was one of the editors of a paper called The News and Educator, published by Richard Nelson, in Cincinnati. The form and name of this paper were changed in 1867, when it was published by R. W. Carroll & Co., as The Educational Times: An American Monthly Magazine of Literature and Education. Of this, W. D. Henkle wrote in 1876, **Mr. Hancock edited the first number, and introduced it with his Valedictory." The editorial diversions of Mr. Hancock of which I have just written, did not alienate his affections from the Ohio Educational Monthly, nor prevent him from contributing frequently to that recognized organ of the State Teachers' Association. Articles from his pen are to be found in almost every volume of the Monthly down to the year of his death. Some of the most important of these are here mentioned, with date of publication, for 68 JOHN HANCOCK. the convenience of any who may wish to refer to them: "Some Hobbies and their Riders," December, 1861, a humorous ** take-off" on certain classes of pedagogues; "Sketch of Cyrus Knowlton, Principal of Hughes High School, Cincinnati," March, 1862; "Language Lessons in the Cincinnati Schools," July, 1871 ; "New Methods of Instruction," February, 1874; "The High School Question," August, 1874; "Classification of Pupils," July 1881 ; "Help for the Needy," an argument in favor of National aid for Southern Schools, February, 1885. In the years 1879, 1880, Dr. Hancock assisted W. D. Henkle, by supplying many paragraphs to the editorial department known as the " Contributors' Club," a very lively and original feature of the Monthly. The contri- butions of Dr. Hancock are signed either X, Y, or Z. When, in the years 1884-5, Dr. Findley, by means of an admirable series of "Symposia," brought together the succinct opinion of the leading educators of the State of Ohio on several vital subjects, such as School Examinations, County Institutes, and Country Schools, Dr. Hancock gave his views, in every "Symposium," with his usual positiveness and power. In regard to school examinations he said: "Questions should, so far as practicable, always be such as will exercise the reasoning powers of the pupils. The demand of an examination of this kind can not be met by cramming, however ingenious." Of County Institutes, he declared the main purpose to be "instruction in teaching and governing a school. All the work should be incidental and subsidiary to this purpose. The managers of an Institute, who make instruction in the several branches taught in our schools a leading feature, make a grave WRITINGS AND ADDRESSES. 69 mistake. * * * * It is essential, too, tiiat instructors in Institutes should be possessed of wisdom, entliusiasm, and skill, — be awake themselves, and have the ability to keep others awake." Dr. Hancock's last contribution to the Monthly was, I believe, one which appeared in June, 1888, on " The First Normal School in Ohio." The article is of much historic value; it preserves many important facts respecting the Normal School at Hopedale and its founders, and pays a merited tribute especially to Jane Donaldson McNeely. The writer of this Memoir recalls that, on the last occasion on which he met Dr. Hancock, — it was at a Teachers' Institute held in August, 1890, at Jewett, Harrison County, Ohio, — the Commis- sioner, then on his official visit to that part of the State, delivered a spontaneous and most moving eulogy on the life and services of Cyrus McNeely, who had recently died at Hopedale. Though the Educational Monthly was, naturally, the principal vehicle by which Dr. Hancock delivered his written ideas to readers, it was by no means the only publication for which he wrote. He responded to many calls for contributions to various newspapers and educa- tional periodicals in different parts of the United States. For many years his name stood in the list of associate editors of Intelligence, the brilliant and aggressive educational journal conducted by E. O. Vaile, in Chicago. WRITINGS AND ADDRESSES. Besides his Reports as Superintendent in Cincinnati, Dayton and Chillicothe, and as State School Commis- sioner, nearly thirty in all, and the many professional 70 JOHN HANCOCK. papers he prepared for County, State and National asso- ciations of teachers, Dr. Hancock wrote innumerable essays for literary societies, teachers' institutes, and educational journals, and speeches or lectures for delivery before popular audiences. He began to practice literary composition as early, at least, as 1850, and kept up the habit to the last day of his life. I have made mention of the essays that he read at the Lyceum in Mr. Rickoff's Academy, and those read before the Cincinnati Literary Club, and also of his principal contributions to the Ohio Educational Monthly, and to the proceedings of the State Association. Some of his material was, of course, worked over for more than one occasion, but the quan- tity of original and unrepeated mental work is remark- able. The large pile of unpublished manuscripts which he left represents but a small fraction of the entire product of his pen. There are those of his friends who will read with interest the titles of his most significant pieces. One of his early lectures, "The True Man," was first read about the year 1855, before the Clermont County Institute, Batavia, Ohio. This furnished the foundation of the more elaborate lecture called "The Common Man." Another early effort was an address on "The Schoolmaster as Seen in Literature," and another, belonging to the same period, is entitled " Talk," a witty and suggestive discussion on the uses and abuses of conversation, and on the famous conversational- ists, Coleridge, Macaulay, Carlyle and others. In 1866, Mr. Hancock prepared a vigorous discourse on " Lectures and Lecturers," and delivered it for the first time at Lawrenceburg, Indiana. In July, 1876, he read, at Glasgow, Kentucky, before the Kentucky State Asso- ciation, an exhaustive paper on "Graded Schools," AS AN INSTITUTE WORKER. 71 which was printed in Morton's Home and School, and reproduced by Dr. Henderson, in his State Report of the Kentucky Schools. In 1878, June 6, he gave an address entitled, "What Shall Our Education Be?" on the occasion of the High School Commencement, at Eaton, Ohio, on the invitation of Superintendent Le Roy Brown. Before the Central Ohio Teachers' Association, at a meeting held in Dayton, November, 1884, Dr. Hancock read a luminous paper on ''What Shall be Done for Our Bright Pupils?" This was pub- lished in the Dayton Journal of November 11, 1884. In the summer of 1885, Dr. Hancock delivered, before the professors and students of Ohio University, a carefully finished and most scholarly oration on '' The Uses of the Higher Education." Perhaps his most ambitious, purely literary discourses are those on "Shakespeare," and on "The Study of Literature." To conclude this partial list of his incidental and general written and spoken performances, we record that, on Memorial Day, in June, 1887, Dr. Hancock delivered, at Soldiers' Circle, in the Eastern grave yard of Chillicothe, an address and eulogy on the " Common Soldier," an eloquent utterance which was printed in the Chillicothe Advertiser of June 3, 1887. AS AN INSTITUTE WORKER. Dr. Hancock was always in demand as an agreeable and efficient worker in teachers' institutes. We have seen that he was a leading spirit in organizing the Clermont County Teachers' Association, in 1848. In August, 1858, he gave courses of lectures before the students of the Lebanon, Ohio, Normal School, on Grammar, and on Esthetics. He attended institutes 72 JOHN HANCOCK. in most of the counties of Ohio, and in many places out of his native State. A pleasant anecdote illustrating Dr. Hancock's tact and good humor as an institute instructor is furnished me by Mr. W. C. Washburne, Principal of the Twenty- sixth District and Intermediate School, of Cincinnati. Mr. Washburn writes: '' It was my pleasure and profit to be a minor instructor in a Teachers' Institute in an Indiana county, years ago, in which for the same week Dr. Hancock was chief instructor. An incident occurred one afternoon which illustrates the plain, unostentatious character of the man, as well as the fine grain of humor which always ran through his speech. The week was an unusually torrid one in the middle of August, and two or three hundred teachers and visitors filled the hall ; in the construction of which all means of ventilation had been certainly ignored. On the afternoon in question, just before the close of the day's session, one of the * critics ' for the day, a young miss, evidently well satisfied with herself, in making her report said, * One of the Professors in speaking to-day used the word *' sweat;" I think he should have said ** perspire." ' Upon her resuming her seat, Mr. Hancock, not then known as ' Dr.', arose, and with that sly twinkle of the eye so natural to him, used almost exactly the following words : * I suspect I am the *' Professor" who offended in saying " sweat." At any rate I did say it, and conditions at any time this week would have justified me in doing so. Further, I meant ** sweat" for two reasons. It is a good, old Anglo-Saxon word, whereas "perspire" is an interloper, and I always prefer one of the former class if I can find one to suit. Besides, we perspire all the LABORS AS TRUSTEE OF OHIO UNIVERSITY. 73 time, waking or sleeping, in summer or in winter ; would die if we couldn't. But with great drops of moisture dripping from every pore of my body, as was the case then, and is now, I know no other word so appropriate as "sweat." I still say '* sweat.' " And he sat down amid the laughing and applause of the suffering, sweating audience. It is needless to say that Mr. Hancock had no intention to wound the feelings of the young lady, but the lesson he thus administered to her doubtless saved her and others humiliation many times afterwards." LABORS AS TRUSTEE OF OHIO UNIVERSITY. Dr. Hancock, though emphatically a Common School man, jealously watchful over the interests of our public system, was never antagonistic to private schools, nor unappreciative of the high function of colleges. He once wrote, editorially, *' We have among our personal friends, teachers of private schools whose scholastic attainments, whose liberality and breadth of views, whose noble courtesy, and large-heartedness might well afford any parent, who should entrust a son or daughter to their charge, assurance that no pains would be spared in giving him or her such instruction as makes admirable men and women." The same editorial goes on to emphasize the fact that, "In the great educational work of our State, the teachers in our colleges and private schools have borne an active and honored part; and to them is Ohio indebted as much for her present stand in education as to the teachers in our public schools." With such sentiments and sympathies, it is not strange that Dr. Hancock was in cordial fellowship with 74 JOHN HANCOCK. college men, and that he was taken into the councils of those who manage higher institutions of education, whether public or private. He was for about fourteen years a prominent member of the Board of Trustees of Ohio University, the oldest college in the State; or, indeed, within the region north-west of the Ohio River. The President of the University Dr. Charles W. Super, obligingly furnishes the following : ** Dr. Hancock's appointment dated from 1877, and in the later years of his life I heard him speak more than once of the hopelessness of the outlook at that time and of the greatly improved prospect of this time-honored institution. When, about six years ago, the question of a State Normal Department began to be discussed, he gave himself heart and soul to the project. After the Legislature had made the first appropriation for this purpose, he rejoiced that he had been able to contribute something toward the better education of teachers in Ohio. He was particularly solicitous in behalf of those outside of the larger cities, for whom nothing had as yet been done in a systemetic way to better fit them for their profession. He keenly felt that in this regard Ohio, so progressive in most matters, should be so far behind nine-tenths of the States of the Union — Ohio, the land of his birth and the scene of his life's labors. There is no doubt that he would have been asked to take charge of the Department had it not become evident, before a formal tender of the Principalship was made, that the salary that could be paid at the start must, owing to the exigencies of the case, be less than he could afford to accept. During his fourteen years term of service he never, so far as I know, missed a meeting of the Board, and was a member of perhaps every impor- LABORS AS TRUSTEE OF OHIO UNIVERSITY. 75 tant committee. He was always ready to aid with his tongue or his presence whenever others thought that he could be of service in either capacity. Such committee work was often quite laborious, as may well be imagined by those who have had a like experience. I recall that on one occasion when he, in company with several other trustees, had a hearing before the Finance Com- mittee of the Legislature, he said to another member of the Board, as we were coming down stairs, * The others simply asked for justice ; I begged for an appro- priation in view of the interests involved.' Yet he never lost hope that justice would ultimately be done the Ohio University, and that a good portion of the revenue of which it had been so unwisely and unright- eously deprived would ultimately be restored. It was this belief, joined to the wish to put normal instruction on a better footing in the State, or at least to make a beginning in this direction, that inspired his efforts and directed his energies as a member of the Board ; for he well knew that without a permanent endowment little or nothing could be done. Yet he was never dictatorial, and freely admitted that those most familiar with the local conditions should have the decisive word in every important measure, it is no disparagement to others who will take his place among us to say that the appointing power will not easily find another who will be equally zealous and equally well equipped for the kind of service here required. It is a matter of deep regret to every friend of the Ohio University that he was not permitted to witness the larger results of his labors which the next few years seem to promise." 76 JOHN HANCOCK. A CHAMPION OF NORMAL SCHOOLS. Mention is made, on another page, of the fact that Dr. Hancock took a most active part in founding and sustaining the Normal School started by Cyrus McNeely, at Hopedale, and that built up by Alfred Holbrook, at Lebanon, Ohio. He held the position of Trustee in both these institutions, and was a life-long friend of each. The Cincinnati Normal School was organized un- der his administration as Superintendent of the City Schools, and he exerted all his influence to insure its success. The present Principal of the school, Mrs. Carrie Newhall Lathrop, in reponse to a note solicit- ing information on the subject says, "I can but give you his own words written to me at different times. He was one of the founders of the Cincinnati Normal School, and always its unsv/erving friend, his interest continuing to the day of his death. He wrote as follows: *I take an abiding interest in the Cincinnati Normal School. I think its establishment one of the best things ever done for the city schools. This school has infused into the methods of instruction new life and vigor.' And again, in that spirit of vigor and of manliness which caused him to regard willful ignorance as a crime, he wrote : * Narrow-minded educators are never truly in favor of Normal Schools. Such has been my observa- tion. Consistency forbids that they should be. The ablest and most er)lightened men of the Board are its friends; and intelligence, when backed by courage, always wins in the end.' '* DEATH AND BURIAL. 77 OTHER OFFICES AND DIGNITIES. Besides holding high rank as Principal and Superin- tendent of City Schools, and memberships and offices in County, State and National educational bodies, and reaching the commanding position of State School Com- misioner. Dr. Hancock was the recipient of numerous other honors and distinctions bestowed on account of his merit and fidelity to public trust. He was a Trustee of the South-Wester n State Normal School, of the McNeely Normal School, and of the Ohio University. Dr. Tappan appointed him a member of the Ohio State Board of Examiners. The honorary degree of Master of Arts was conferred on him, in 1856, by Kenyon College, and the degree of Doctor of Philosophy was given him, in 1876, by the University of Wooster. DEATH AND BURIAL. John Hancock fell, as, in his eulogy on Horace Mann, he said every true warrior would wish to fall, *'with his armor on." The iron was crushed at last. Death came suddenly, entered the State House unseen and unher- alded, — ^found the Commissioner sitting at the desk of duty, touched the fine machinery of his brain and stopped it forever, liberating the soul into the leisure of heavenly rest. For sixty-six years, three months and thirteen days the man breathed vital air, and was then translated to immortality. His body died at ten minutes after ten o'clock, on Monday morning June the first, 1891. The circumstances of the tragic change are recorded with minuteness in the Ohio newspapers of the week in which the mournful event took place. 78 JOHN HANCOCK. The first day of a new month and of a new season, June and Summer, had dawned, and it was the first working day of a fresh week, Monday. Everything betokened life and hope and vigor. Dr. Hancock arrived at his oifice, as was his daily custom, at about nine o'clock, apparently in his usual health and spirits. A reporter on the staff of the Columbus Dispatch dropped in and was entertained for a few minutes with pleasant office chat. The Commissioner, seated at his desk, began his day's duties by writing a note accepting an invitation to be the guest of Superintendent Thomas, while attend- ing the commencement exercises of the Schools of Ash- land, Ohio. *' If the train holds out to run, I expect to be with you on the 4th inst., about the time you name. Please give my kindest regards to your good wife for her solicitude for my wellfare. I shall look forward to a pleasant time." These were the words of the last letter — *'I shall look forward to a pleasant time." Shortly before ten o'clock, Dr. Hancock remarked to his chief clerk, Hon. Wm. S. Matthews, that he was not feeling quite well. Soon after this remark, Mr. Matthews had occasion to step out of the office on business, and the Commis- sioner was left with his statistical clerk, Mr. Richard L. Allbritain, whose table stood near that at which Dr. Hancock wrote. A few sentences passed between the gentlemen, on clerical matters, and both lapsed into silence. Not many moments passed before Mr. All- britain heard his chief breathing heavily, and, looking around, he saw the Doctor's body bent forward, his head resting on the desk, and his right arm hanging down as though in the act of reaching for something that had fallen to the floor. Mr. Allbritain sprang to his assistance, and was alarmed to discover unmistakable DEATH AND BURIAL. 79 evidences of an apoplectic stroke. He called for help, and was promptly assisted by two gentlemen who chanced to be passing the office door, — Captain Edmond- son, of the Adjutant-General's office, and Mr. W. S. Plum, of Bellefontaine. The dying Commissioner was carried to a lounge, and medical aid was immediately summoned. Doctor Probs, Secretary of the State Board of Health, soon reached the room, and Doctors White and Flowers also came within a few minutes. But the stricken man was beyond the aid of science. He was unconscious from the time he received the stroke, and his heart ceased to beat within ten minutes of the instant his head first bowed upon the table. It was observed that, when the fata! moment came, and his breast fell forward upon the desk, his watch chain was broken, and the case of his watch was twisted. The watch and chain of gold were given him by the teachers of the Chillicothe Schools. The swift, sad tidings spreading to every room of the Capitol drew to the dead Commissioner's solemn pres- ence the State officials from the Governor down. The flags were put at half mast. The terrible news of her husband's decease was borne to Mrs. Hancock and her family by Mr. Allbritain. The city of Columbus was in mourning for the departure of a man universally respected and loved. On the morning of June 2, a meeting of State officers and others was held at the office of the Attorney-General. Speeches eulogistic of Dr. Hancock were made by Gov- ernor Campbell, Judge Williams, of the Supreme Court, Attorney-General Watson, Auditor Poe, Professor Knott, Superintendent of the Deaf and Dumb Institution, and others. A series of resolutions, drawn by Governor 8o JOHN HANCOCK. Campbell, Judge Williams and General Watson, was adopted. Religious services over the remains were conducted at the Broad Street Presbyterian Church, Columbus, at 4 o'clock P. M., Wednesday, June 3. *' The services," says a Columbus newspaper, **were attended by Gov- erner Campbell and all the State officers, the State Board of Equalization adjourning for that purpose, besides a large number of prominent educators from a distance, in addition to many friends in this city. Rev. Francis E. Marsten officiated at the service and briefly reviewed the exemplary life of the honored dead, whose memory is revered by all, especially those who knew him best. The remarks of the officiating clergyman were supple- mented by Dr. Scott, of the State University, who, from personal knowledge, paid tributes to the mental endow- ments, educational worth, ability and high personal integrity of his departed friend. The casket was wreathed in flowers worked into the most beautiful designs, as tokens of esteem from those who had labored in educa- tional work with the deceased, and from friends and associates in Columbus and elsewhere. Those who acted as pall-bearers at the church were Messrs. W. G. Harrington, J. C. Gray, F. C. Maxwell, J. H. Dunn, C. A. Bowe and E. F. McManigal." The final resting place destined to receive the body of Dr. Hancock was a family lot in Spring Grove Ceme- tery, Cincinnati, where, beside the ashes of an infant daughter, his form was laid, on the fourth day of June. The remains were conveyed from Columbus to Cfncfn- nati, by a special train over the Midland Road. When the cars stopped at Wilmington, the school children of that place stood grouped on the platform DEATH AND BURIAL. 8l of the station, each holding a bunch of bright garden flowers. While the train paused, the teachers placed the bunches in pretty baskets and put them aboard. The train reached Spring Grove a little before noon, and the last obsequies were conducted in the chapel and at the grave by Rev. W. H. Warren, of the Central Congregational Church. The pall-bearers were, J. W. Knott, of Columbus, and E. A. Jones, of Massillon, representing the State Board of Examiners ; J. A. Shawan, of Columbus, and W. H. Morgan, of Cincin- nati, representing the School Superintendents ; F. C. Sessions and George H. Twiss, representing the His- torical Society; Chief Justice Minshall, Adjutant-General Dill and State Auditor Poe, representing the State officials. The day was a perfect one, — ^the sky was clear, the air sweet with the breath of June, the earth clad in beauty ; and never did the paradise of Spring Grove seem a lovelier type of the garden of immortal peace and happiness than when the mortal remains of our friend were tenderly lowered to a bed of silence and everlasting repose. The wide-spreading and low-bending boughs of a maple tree, with soft green foliage golden in sunshine, hung over the grave and the group of mourners that stood near it ; and as dust was committed to dust, and the last solemn prayer was spoken, the subdued hum- ming of honey-bees among the leaves overhead sounded like the music of benediction. Around the spot of burial were assembled the wife and sons of John Hancock, with many of his nearest and dearest old friends and neigh- bors. The Public Schools were represented by a number of veteran teachers who knew the deceased intimately in the early days when he taught in the 82 JOHN HANCOCK. District and Intermediate Schools of Cincinnati, or served the city as Superintendent. The brown mould was heaped above the place of sepulture, and flowers, contributed by Ohio's State officers and the teachers of Chillicothe and the little children of Wilmington, were laid upon the grave, a fragrant offering. GENEALOGY AND FAMILY CONNECTIONS. John Hancock was too much engrossed with other concerns to devote great attention to the genteel pastime of constructing a family tree. Perhaps, being decidedly a man of the people, so loyal to the democratic idea of equality among men, he looked with some preju- dice upon those who discrimnate too nicely between the blue blood of aristocracy and the red blood of common folks. Or it may be that he considered it a more laudable ambition to be the founder of a worthy line than the scion of a distinguished ancestor. But it is an instinct of our nature to inquire somewhat into the origin of one's self, and Dr. Hancock, prompted by this instinct, did make some slight research into the history of his progenitors. His wife furnishes the following items of information: **Asto genealogy, I believe Mr. Han- cock received more data in regard to it from General Winfield S. Hancock than from any other source. Dates he did not preserve, but some time in the Seven- teenth Century, two brothers Hancock came from England to this country, one settling in Massachusetts, from whom Governor John Hancock of that State was descended. The other settled in New Jersey, and from him General Hancock traces his descent. So much, the General vouchsafed to our son. Lieutenant Wm. F. GENEALOGY AND FAMILY CONNECTIONS. 83 Hancock, after he had ordered him to Governor's Island expressly to inquire from which of the families Will was descended. When told by Will that his great grand- father, Henry Hancock, came from New Jersey, the Gen- eral replied, * I, too, am of that stock, and you and I are the only officers of that name in the army. I will see you again.' But death came swiftly to General Hancock, and this little scrap of family history is about all that we have." Henry Hancock, with his wife, came from New Jersey early in this century, bringing with him his young son David, who was born in 1797, and was the eldest of his father's children. When quite a young man David Hancock was married to Miss Thomas Anne Roberts, a woman of Welch descent, but born in America. David Hancock seems to have been a man of force and popularity, with military predilections, for we find that in the year 1828, he was chosen Captain of the Seventh Company, Second Regiment, Third Brigade, of the Eighth Division of the Ohio Militia, — a company organized in 1818, under the command of Captain James B. Simmons. To David and Anne Han- cock were born six sons and daughters, Sarah, who died in infancy, John, the subject of this Memoir, Mary Ann, now Mrs. John Widmeyer, William R., Elizabeth, now Mrs. Philip Kennedy, and Joseph H. The mother died at the age of thirty-five, leaving five small children, of whom John was the eldest. The principal events of John Hancock's childhood and youth, — how he was raised by Mrs. iVloore ; and the story of his individual progress, — have already been related. Of his life in the relations of husband and father, it is proper to say something. He was married 84 JOHN HANCOCK. August 2, 1855, to Miss Elizabeth Jones,* of Cincinnati, then a teacher in Herron's Seminary, Mt. Auburn. ''How well do I remember," writes his friend, Hon. E. C. Ellis, ''the day — during the great Teachers' Institute held at Oxford, in 1855 — he came to me, handed me a very neat and modest wedding card, and said, ' Ellis, I want you to take charge of my classes for a few days.' The marriage proved an exceedingly fortunate union, the twain becoming one in the fullest scriptural sense, and living together in the utmost harmony and happiness for more than thirty-five years, when he passed on to prepare a place for her in the New World. And here let be recorded what Dr. Hancock's spirit would be most pleased to have set down, not only his constant lover- like devotion to her, but his often acknowledged indebted- ness to her wisdom, prudence, patience, and fidelity, as a ' helpmeet ' for him in all the vicissitudes of a laborious career. It would scarcely be an exaggeration to say that Mrs. Hancock, more than any other, or than all others, made her husband the successful man he was. She enabled him, by her sympathy, and cooperation, to perform the part that his inclination and temperament best fashioned him to act ; for there never was a man whose wishes better answered to his natural capacity than did his. Mrs. Hancock is a true queen of home, whose domestic affairs are regulated according to what Matthew Arnold calls the 'sweet ordering' of a womanly intellect and heart. A woman of vigorous * Mrs. Hancock is the daughter of a Virginia gentleman who removed to Clermont County and became Mayor of the town of New Richmond. She is a sister to Mr. Thomas Jones, of Dayton, Kentucky, well known as having long been a County officer in Campbell County, Kentucky. GENEALOGY AND FAMILY CONNECTIONS. 85 constitution, strong common sense, rare industry and frugality, keen wit, fine sensibility, and liberal education, she united in the character of a good wife the sagacious counselor, the congenial friend, the admiring critic and the affectionate companion. Her accomplishments as an excellent housekeeper are supplemented by those social and moral graces which lend the highest charms to womanhood. A clear thinker, a discriminating reader, a poet, a pleasant talker, — how could she fail to prove the suited wife to such a husband ? The pair realized Tennyson's ideal marriage, in which the woman is set to the man * Like perfect music unto noble words.' Mrs. Hancock bore to her husband seven children, six of whom are living, one daughter and five sons. These are Mrs. Mary B. Chapman, a widow, now Assistant Principal of the Los Angeles High School ; Charles B. Hancock, lawyer and special attorney for the Coal and Iron and Improvement Co., of South-eastern Kentucky, Stanton, Powell County, Kentucky ; Wm. F. Hancock, First Lieutenant 5th Artillery, U. S. A., San Francisco ; Mason Parker Hancock, Real Estate Agent, Vancouver, B! A. ; John Hancock, Machinist in the B. & O. R. R. Shops, Chillicothe; and D. Roberts Hancock, Medical Student in the State University, Columbus, Ohio. Charles B. Hancock is an alumnus of Cincinnati University, and Lieutenant Wm. F., a graduate of West Point. Dr. Hancock held paramount the paternal duty of educating his children. The surest fortune that he could bestow, was, he thought, a good * bringing up.' The aristocracy to which he was most 86 - JOHN HANCOCK. anxious to promote his daughter and sons was the Four Hundred of Culture. It was made up of reading-rooms, the house of John Hancock, — ^from garret to basement, from kitchen to parlor. In the summer of 1888, I spent a few days with the Hancocks when they were living at Chillicothe, in their comfortable home there, the quaint fashioned, thick-walled, solid, wide-roomed old Holcomb House, on Caldwell Street. Dr. Hancock had just returned from a sojourn in the South, and all the children, except Charles, as I remember, were at home,— the last general family reunion they ever enjoyed. One afternoon, I recollect, every member of the household, and the guest, too, fell into a bookish mood, and all joined in a laugh when the common discovery was made that not one was without a volume, or a magazine in hand. We were having a 'good time,' Mr. Hancock remarked. A beautiful spirit reigned in the the Hancock family at home. Father, mother and children worked together in harmony, and shared the same recreations. Dr. Hancock, though a firm, and at times a stern, parent, was never capri- cious nor exacting. The young people regarded him with a love that swallowed up fear, and he knew it. In the words of his wife, * The life among his children was a merry one, with occasional outbursts of vexation at noise or waywardness, which in their mildness were amusing.' By the unconscious tuition which his just and pure character radiated, the children were controlled and educated. The deep and lasting impression that his daily walk and conversation had upon his family is revealed, with the sincerity of love and sorrow, in words written by his soldier son, in California, June 2, 1891, to a bereaved CHARACTER AND LIFE SERVICES. Bj mother: * He was a man/ wrote Lieutenant Hancock, * that anyone would have been proud to call father, — a man who never did a mean or dishonorable thing in his life ; and whose faults, if we can call them such, were all on the side of kindness and charity. It is a terrible thing to think that such a man should have been taken before his time, and leave such a void in the hearts of his family and friends; — and all were his friends who had anything good or honest in them. Never did I think when I left him two years and a half ago that I would never see his kindly face or hear his dear voice again. I am a wanderer over the land, and could have expected that he would die some time, perhaps, away from me ; but not so soon, not so soon. And I will never see him again, nor hear him ask in his good humored way, '' What do you think of that, Bill ?" * >K * * Parker had just left me that morning at Alcatraz, when I heard the news. And I telegraphed to the city for him to come over. We could neither of us speak that night." CHARACTER AND LIFE SERVICES. John Hancock was of the optimistic temperament ; hope and faith never deserted him ; he believed in God, in man, in the educability of the race, and in the sure progress of civilization. A vigorous constitution and robust health supplied abundant energy to keep his body and mind pleasurably active ; the times in which he lived stimulated him to exertion ; he was ambitious, aspiring and courageous ; but the influences which fixed his early opinions and shaped his habits, and the con- straining occupations of his later life, held him within the bounds of what is well called liberal conservatism. 88 JOHN HANCOCK. He was regular, not eccentric, a man identified with established institutions, obedient to existing social cus- toms, orthodox in theology, allopathic in medicine, in politics a Federal and protectionist. Usage and conven- tional form were respected by him, his clothes were cut in the prevailing style, he mixed with his neighbors, he read the daily newspapers and the monthly magazines, he voted at all elections and generally his ticket was open and "straight," he went to church on Sunday, said grace at table, and, in a word, performed the standard duties usually expected of a conscientious citizen, without affectation of manner or singularity of theory. A strong anti-slavery Whig up to the time the Whig party went to pieces, he thenceforward adhered firmly to the Republican party, believing strongly in the neces- sity of union, centralized government, and the abolition of slavery. Decidedly a partisan, he took a lively and zealous interest in every political campaign, engaging with a keen relish in the discussion of current questions at issue, and supporting in true American fashion the candidates of his choice. It was his opinion that "a man without a party is almost as bad off as a man with- out a country." The defeat of the Republicans in any contest he took as a personal misfortune, assuming as a settled fact that the principles of his party are right in the main and those of the opposition in the main wrong. In November, 1884, he wrote to an intimate friend, with good-humored chagrin, ''Since the election of Cleveland I am to be considered dead — though letters may be sent to me as though I were still alive." Notwithstanding his zeal and legitimate active participancy in politics, Dr. Hancock was adverse to employing partisan measures CHARACTER AND LIFE SERVICES. 89 in affairs not falling within the proper sphere of State or national politics. Especially did he insist on separating the interests of religion and education from the corrupt influence of the saloon caucus and the '* ward bummer's" mercenary vigilance. The election of men to school offices as a reward for partisan service, and the appoint- ment of teachers and superintendents from political motives, he deprecated as a most serious evil. A letter of his, dated May, 1891, conveys his mind on the subject in these words: *'I fear that even in thinking of a partisan test in the employment of a teacher the Board is entering upon a course that can not but end in a lowering of the morale of the schools. There is no safe rule to follow other than 'get the best.' If dickering politics comes in, the character of the schools is gone." As regards theology and religion. Dr. Hancock was something eclectic. The neighborhood and county in which he spent his youth embraced a variety of sects, that contended each for proselytes. From his father the boy must have received the impress of Methodistic instruction, and a reverential introduction to the Bible. By his benefactress, Mrs. Moore, he was taught and trained in strict accordance with the severe exactions of the rigorous Quakerism which she professed and prac- ticed. After some years residence in Cincinnati, Dr. Hancock became a constant attendant at the Congrega- tional Church, having been attracted by the eloquent and inspiring sermons of Dr. C. B. Boynton. Not until after his removal to Columbus, to take the office of State School Commissioner, did he attach himself to a partic- ular religious denomination, as a professed church mem- ber ; he there joined the Broad Street Presbyterian Church. 90 JOHN HANCOCK. While maintaining the essentials of protestant evan- gelical Christianity, and adhering to formal worship at home and abroad, Dr. Hancock was tolerant of all sects, and not unwilling to consider the grounds of any sincere belief or disbelief, however repugnant to his ideas or even to his prejudices. Though his conservative nature fortified him against innovating doubts, he was not timid about entertaining new ideas ; he was willing that every thinker should think aloud, and liked to listen to repre- sentative voices of whatever school, Jew or Gentile, Catholic or Protestant, and to compare the 'ics, Msms, and 'ologies, of every religion, science and philosophy. The momentous questions growing out of the conflicts or concords of science and theology, — the profound discussions of modern times concerning evolution, biology, and the basis of ethics, occupied a large part of his studious thought, and consumed many nours of his leisure. Significant books of fundamental principles, dealing with the problems of human nature, life and destiny were eagerly sought and studied by him. He was modestly conversant with the writings of Spencer, Huxley, Darwin and other modern authors who have disturbed the world by their arguments and specula- tions. Doubtless Dr. Hancock's habit of delving into books of a philosophic or metaphysical character was induced by the systematic reading of the works of Sir William Hamilton, which he carried through in company with Rickoff, Parker, Tappan and others, shortly after he first came to Cincinnati. In after years, his intimacy with Dr. W. T. Harris, gave renewed ardor to his inves- tigations in speculative philosophy. If the rectitude of a man's character may be inferred from the uprightness of his outward conduct, — if the CHARACTER AND LIFE SERVICES. 91 tree may be known by its fruit, — John Hancock was pure in heart, kind by instinct, true to the line of unde- viating morality. The clean soul which was his essential self was clothed in a body which he kept undefiled. The virtues of chastity and temperance were not only never violated by him — ^they were inviolable. Free and generous in the use and enjoy- ment of the good things of life, partaking joyously of the legitimate pleasures supplied through the senses and the imagination, he yet kept appetites and passions in abeyance, under the sovereignty of a strong will that never abdicated the throne. Perhaps he spent his money somewhat too carelessly, but liberality is a fault that leans to virtue's side. A friend in need could ask a pecuniary favor of him, and rather than not accommo- date his friend, Hancock would borrow in order to loan. Like Goldsmith, he would give of his substance, some- times, to the unworthy poor, moved by the pangs of pity. A weakness so amiable, associated with many uncom- promising traits of rigorous morality, might be mildly named a '' redeeming vice.'* The mint and cummin of external, minor morality were not substituted, by Dr. Hancock, for the weightier matters of the law; the severity of his ethical code was applied to the eradica- tion of evil that " Sticks deeper, grows with more pernicious root" in the hidden soul ; no pity, no toleration, no favor, could he extend to falsehood, hypocricy, dishonesty, or to the mean vices of detraction, scandal and pusillanimity. Truth, sincerity, honor, fidelity ruled his spirit and determined his deeds. The man who had once deceived him, or lied in any form, could never regain his confi- 92 JOHN HANCOCK. dence or his love. The frowning anger with which he heard the disclosure of a contemptible scheme or act seemed so relentless that one, seeing it, might imagine him harsh, unforgiving and bigoted: but he was not so; he was neither vindictive nor self-righteous ; his resent- ment was filled with sorrow. There were occasions on which he appeared cold and hard as granite, — but this granite was easy to melt. A certain unsentimental sturdiness in him caused him to scorn weakness and snivelling. But the sight of misfortune or suffering he could not bear without manifesting sympathy and tenderness. Though half ashamed of tears, like a big boy, he could not always restrain their flow ; his eyes would moisten at the relation of a pathetic story, and, in the manner of Macduff, he was apt to betray his emotion by his attempts to hide it. The promptings of compas- sion impelled him to deeds of kindness. Dr. Hancock's disposition was remarkably free from envy, jealousy and mistrust. And what an addition it makes to a man's stock of excellences, to subtract envy jealousy and mistrust ! Most men are self-seeking — they rejoice in their own victories, and can bear with cheer- ful equanimity the defeats of their competitors. Dr. Hancock was fond of distinction, — he strove for the palm, — but he also helped others to succeed, and took a sincere pleasure in their prosperity and promotion. Was there ever a man more ready to do favors than he was ? He discovered exquisite satisfaction in planning practical ways of serving those whom he considered meritorious, or whom, for any reason, he chose to befriend. He was forever ** lending a hand," and that, too, without expect- ing the loan to be returned with interest. The individuality of John Hancock was strongly CHARACTER AND LIFE SERVICES. 93 emphasized. His personal appearance, his manner, his voice, his opinions, distinguished him in any company. Whatever he said or wrote had a flavor of its own. The name of no other man in the list of Ohio's prominent educators, calls to the memory a more strikingly recog- nizable figure than does that of John Hancock. Strong, masculine, independent, he had much of that quality which Swift calls egoity, and which is not always distin- guishable from egotism. Unconscious egotism is often worn as a defensive armor, and it may cover a nature essentially modest. Mr. Hancock was self-made and self-propelled: who would push him forward if he did not move himself ? By strenuous effort he won his way from point to point. Why be scared in the presence of people } He conceived that he had rights upon this planet— no man more. Therefore he always took grounds, and was not to be abashed, ignored, or suppressed. He had views on every subject. He made himself at home in all companies. He was the farthest removed from that type of person described by Emerson, the type that seems to cringe and apologize for very existence. Han- cock was not that sort of man. Finding himself in the world, with life to live, he availed himself of all the privileges of the occasion. And so he lived and learned and wrought with all his mind and might, aiding himself by such instruments as he could command, in the way of books, friends, teachers, and experience. Forceful, but not obtrusive ; inquisitive, but never presumptuous ; devoted to his convictions, but not intolerant or obstinate ; he solicited knowledge from every source, and tested all he gathered with the touch-stone of his own reason aided by the judgment of the best minds he could consult in books or men. Few men had more reverence than he 94 JOHN HANCOCK. had for authority. He was humble in the presence of acknowledged greatness, and never arrogant towards equals or inferiors; for he seemed endowed with the three reverences named by Goethe : Reverence for that which is above us, for that which is around, and for that which is below. Very sociable, and as ready to give as to receive the quick currency of genial intercourse, he was welcome because polite and agreeable in society. Whether he came as an accidental visitor or an invited guest, he was greeted with smiles and hearty hand-shaking (he shook hands heartily), and was admitted to the informal talk of the family circle. Old-fashioned, simple-mannered folks called him ''neighborly.-' He liked to be with people, in small companies or large, and therefore availed himself of opportunities to attend parties, picnics, clubs, concerts, lectures, dramatic performances, religious gatherings, educational conventions, and political meet- ings. These occasions of public assemblage were rich in pleasure and instruction for him, — they supplemented his reading, widened his horizon of thought, and gave to his imperfect scholastic acquirements the equivalent of a ''University Extension Course." He kept his eyes, ears and mind open ; seized with avidity the things he saw and heard, and treasured up all as material for future use in the way of fact, argument, illustration or contem- plative enjoyment. In his vacations he traveled a good deal, never failing to utilize the incidental advantages afforded to members of the State and National Teachers' Associations, of visiting interesting places and meeting representative men. Every city in which he sojourned he made a study of, not only in respect to its outward features, but in its social and literary institutions, its CHARACTER AND LIFE SERIVCES. 95 history, character and prospects. Much as he Hked society and to be where numbers congregate for common improvement; much as he valued that inspiration which the collective energy and wisdom of the impersonal multitude impart to the individual, — as a great dynamo charges the air with induced electricity, — Dr. Hancock perhaps found his most perfect satisfaction and his highest intellectual profit, not in society but in solitude. Self-activity, individual effort, must be, in the nature of things, the means, if not the chief end, of human culture. We are not taught, — we learn. Knowledge can not be poured into the mind, it must be drawn in, — by a vital act. No one can read for another or think for another or feel for another. Dr. Hancock realized the truth of this, and he exercised his mental powers to their utmost bent, in the tranquil privacy of his library. His reading chair was his college. He organized a studious ''Club of One,'* and himself was the club. Books were to him knowledge, power, security, solace and delight. The broad, undu- lous fields of general literature were his soul's pasture. The books on which he fed were the ripe and juicy ones, the nutritious fruits of wit and wisdom, the precious and permanent classics of the world. He was familiar with the standard novels, dramas, poems, essays in modern English literature ; and the range of his curiosity led him to peruse the famous masterpieces in prose and verse of foreign authors, ancient and recent; though he was obliged to content himself with translations. Though unable to read Italian, French or German, he was well acquainted with the substance of the principal writings of Dante and Petrarch, of' Rabelais, Montaigne, Voltaire and Hugo, of Goethe, Schiller and some of the German philosophers. Shakespeare and Wordsworth were his 96 JOHN HANCOCK. favorite poets ; Dickens and Thackeray his chosen novel- ists ; he read Carlyle with worshipful wonder, especially ** Sartor," and was an admirer of Arnold's essays. Dr. Hancock preached the gospel of work, and prac- ticed his preaching. Chaucer describes one of his Canterbury pilgrims as seeming busier than he was : Hancock was busier than he seemed. What an amazing amount of good, honest work he accomplished I The habit of doing regular duties every day fixed upon him in childhood, and remained with him up to the very moment of his demise. The pen was in his hand when his summons came. The son of industrious parents, the only fortune he inherited was the necessity of earning his own living, by the sweat of his brow or the toil of his brain, or by both. His first tasks were those which fall to a farmer's boy. Then he learned to work as student. Then as teacher. Assuredly he worked his way on and up. He went ahead, seeking service, and willing to take hold. Ready hands and faithful hearts rarely fail to find employment. Doors open to importu- nate knocking. This knight of labor pushed forward. He shrank from no hardship, evaded no necessary drudgery. He paid for what he gained by spending himself; glad to spend and be spent. The debating society, the literary club, the library, the institute, the teachers' association, afford him fields of labor. He goes to the city and competes with other energetic teachers for the prizes of success. He writes, speaks, edits journals. He becomes City Superintendent, and as he rises in importance and dignity in the eyes of the world, more and more work calls to be done by him. And so it goes on through life. The duties pile up, the responsibilities redouble, the burdens grow. To him CHARACTER AND LIFE SERVICES. 97 that hath strain to bear, tasks to accomplish, care to endure, shall be added other strain, tasks and cares. How noble a thing it is to keep on doing one's simple duty, year after year, until **it is finished." What was Dr. Hancock's ruling motive or purpose ? What was the tenor of his activity ? What, essentially did he do, or aim to do ? His dominant wish which prompted him to engage, with almost passionate ardor, in the several labors of his career, was the wish to benefit as many as possible by the ameliorating offices of educa- tion. He was a teacher, an educator. A man of the people, he loved the people, believed in them, gave his life, soul and body, to the cause of the common man, hoping to serve humanity best by means of the common public school. Thoroughly democratic, he interpreted the Declaration of Independence quite literally, and read in its words a reinforcement of the Bible doctrine of the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. ** This thing I do," — might have been his heart's language, — 'M would work for the common school, — I would teach the children of the people, — I would be an uplifter of the masses." And he was a true apostle of the people. His utterances embody the highest ideas of average democracy on culture, duty, life, and man's destiny on earth. A man of the people, he served the people in their highest and deepest needs. He wrote no famous books, he founded no original system of peda- gogics, he climbed no pinnacle of special scholarship; but his example was a treatise on correct conduct, his devotion to the best known principles of teaching was better than a new theory, his desire to know all truth and his reverence for all learning were more than equiv- alent to the fame which erudition gives. The State of 98 JOHN HANCOCK. Ohio honors him for the services he rendered to her schools. His name is known and respected by the most eminent leaders of his profession in every State of the Union. He has gone home, but gentle and tender recol- lections of him will linger with those who knew and loved him, as long as consciousness shall endure. Children of generations to come shall inherit the precious results of his life work, and will pay him a due tribute of gratitude when they read on his tombstone JOHN HANCOCK, EDUCATOR. The pen to which was entrusted the task of record- ing the lines of this Memoir, falters to trace the con- cluding words. What a trial it is to the emotions of a writer to sketch the life of a dear friend recently deceased, only they can realize who have been called upon to discharge a duty so sadly sacred, — so laden with memory of the "days that are no more." Thirty-five years of familiar association with John Hancock bound me closely to him by many ties. From him, at a time when encouragement was needed, I received unsolicited " Favors so sweet they went to my heart's root." I first met him at Oxford, Ohio, in 1855 : by his agency I was drawn to Cincinnati in 1862; our mutual relations and common pursuits fostered an intimacy not unlike that which sometimes exists between an older brother and a younger, whose sympathies are reciprocal. In July 1882, the Ohio Teachers' Association met at Niagara, and on the closing session of the last day, services were held to the memory of Wm. D. Henkle. At the conclusion of these exercises, in a familiar conver- sation relating to Mr. Henkle, who was much endeared to JOHN HANCOCK, EDUCATOR. 99 US both, Mr. Hancock said, half in jest half in earnest, that he wished, in case he should die first, I would write his obituary. In the same semi-serious mood that led him to speak, I answered, giving a playful promise. It seems that he mentioned this interview to one or two ; and I remember he alluded to it in my presence in June, 1888. On the day of his burial, in Spring Grove, Mr. Allbritain called my attention to this pledge; and, afterwards, Mrs. Hancock, standing beside her husband's new-made grave, added her request that I should write down, for permanent preservation, an estimate of his life, work, and character. Mrs. Hancock's wishes were seconded and urged by many friends of the deceased, and I could not refuse to discharge the duty assigned me ; for what had before appeared only an expression of confidential regard, now assumed the character of a sacred compact. It was proposed that a small memorial volume be prepared and published, and the book now in the reader's hand is the fruit of the suggestion. The editor has availed himself of the contributions of several educators, men and women, who were well acquainted with Dr. Hancock, and who enjoyed his full confidence and earnest regard. The words of these devoted and judicious witnesses of the beauty and nobleness of Dr. Hancock's character, give authenticity, as well as color and variety, to the narrative : the man is truly and lovingly described in a symposium of his best friends and fairest judges. His own language, also, will be found quoted in many paragraphs of the book, reflecting personal traits, and emphasizing characteristic and cherished opinions, often expressed with humor, and always with vigor ; the pen of the dead still speaks, and the mute page seems audible with his well-remembered voice. ^- I can not grieve for him,— he stands A strong, bright presence smiling down upon me, A palm of triumph held within his hands. And in his eyes the look that once so won me. How can I grieve for him ? for rest Remains to him whose life was noble toiling; How grieve? when his exultant footsteps pressed That shore where robes are washed from earthly soiling. I can not grieve for him,— for Peace, In her white raiment and her stillness, ever Fills for his hand full cups of glad release From ills and cares gone down in Life's pure river. Oh, who can grieve for him? He stands A strong, bright presence with the just, the glorious, — A palm of triumph held within his hands. Like them, o'er Grief and Pain, o'er Death victorious. Mrs. J. H. Los Angeles, Cal., Nov., 12, 1891. IN MEMORIAM. I. PERSONAL LETTERS AND MESSAGES OF CONDOLENCE. Seldom has it happened anywhere that the memory of a man, whose life was devoted solely to the cause of education, has been honored as was Dr. Hancock's by so many expressions of private and public love and esteem. The public schools of Dayton and Chillicothe were closed on the day of the funeral. The Boards of Education of those cities, and of Cincinnati, Lebanon, New Richmond, Loveland, and I know not how many other towns, hastened to call special meetings and pass resolutions of respect and condolence. The Principals' Association, of Cincinnati, resolved, among other things, ** That in the death of this well known friend of popular education, the State has lost one of its most efficient public officers, — ^the cause of education, one of its fore- most and capable exponents, — and the teachers of Cin- cinnati have suffered a personal bereavement in the loss of a dearly beloved and constant friend." The State Board of Examiners passed resolutions of a like nature. Such is the tenor of many other testimonials elicited by the sad event. In Columbus, action was taken by the J. C. McCoy Post No. I, G. A. R., resulting in a message of sympathy to Mrs. Hancock, on account of the death of *' a true and 104 JOHN HANCOCK. honored friend and comrade." The Committee closed their communication with the words, *' We are glad that our emblem — ^the G. A. R. Button — rests with him." From every direction, far and near, numerous tele- graphic messages flew to the house of mourning ; and the mails brought a multitude of letters bearing ** golden opinions from all sorts of people," — some conspicuous in the educational world, others who knew Dr. Hancock as the genial companion of literary men, others who had received from him personal or professional favors, — but the greater number those who were attached to him by the bonds of simple friendship or the nearer ties of family connection. It would take up too much space in a volume of this kind, to reproduce a tenth part, of the true and beautiful things written of Dr. Hancock in the many letters here referred to. A few representative passages, however, are given, as conveying sentiments that fairly generalize the thought and feeling of many. Andrew J. Rickoff wrote from New York, "Mr. Hancock was the warmest and dearest of my friends. Intimately asso- ciated as I was very nearly forty years ago, I have ever since maintained with him the most sympathetic rela- tions. The reflection that he has left record of an honorable life and of distinguished services to the State is a better heritage to his children than great wealth." Emerson E. White wrote, 'M loved your departed hus- band as a brother, and esteemed him as the truest of men and the noblest of friends. I first met him at the State Association in Cleveland, n-early thirty-eight years ago, and we have met nearly every year since. My esteem and love for him have increased from year to year." William H. Morgan said, " For forty years I have known him well. He has been in my eyes a pillar of the educa- MESSAGES OF CONDOLENCE. 105 tional structure of our State, — yes, in our Nation." John Ogden sent from North Dakota his sorrowful word, ** You must allow me a small place in the almost world- wide weeping for the loss of your dear husband. The glory of his life shines brightly across the stream of death." J. L. Pickard, from Iowa City, wrote, **I loved him as I have loved very few others. True and sincere was his friendship. For more than twenty-five years — Hancock, Harris and Rickoff, are names most frequently heard in my home. Their friendship has proved a bless- ing to me — ^their work an inspiration for me. The sessions of our * Round Table' are the happiest memories of my life. Because he loved his wife and children so tenderly, I loved him. Because he had a great warm heart, I loved him. Because he sought so patiently and so lovingly the good of the unnumbered youth to whose education his life was devoted, I loved him." From California, LeRoy D. Brown wrote, "your noble husband was an inspiration to all who knew him, but in a particular degree was he an inspiration to teachers. In 1866 when I entered upon my chosen work, my at- tention was called to Dr. Hancock's strong articles on education, which appearred in school journals. Later came his Reports as the Superintendent of Instruction in Cincinnati ; which led me to travel a long distance that I might hear him lecture before the Washington County Institute at Marietta. Since 1886 his potrait has hung in our parlor." The estimate of a representative woman, distinguished as an educational leader, Mrs. Delia L. Williams, of Delaware, Ohio, is summed in these sentences : ** He was a good man, high-souled, true, one of God's noblemen. Nobody knows better than I how he scorned a mean act. He was one of my best friends. I06 JOHN HANCOCK. The world is poorer, much poorer for his going. I think I shall never cease to miss him." Extracts in a strain similar to the foregoing might be selected from dozens of letters from other sources, but these sufficiently indicate the esteem in which Dr. Hancock was held by those of his own profession who knew him best. I will add the witness of a gentleman who, though not a teacher, has long been identified with the highest interests of education, Dr. C. G. Comegys, of Cincinnati. Cincinnati, June 2d, I89i. -^ Dear Mrs. Hancock : — The blow that has fallen upon you has been felt by the multi- tude among whom your husband's name was a household word. The long and happy acquaintance which I have had with him is a great feature of my life, and with no one have I received more benefit in regard to themes of education than from him. The whole State feels his loss and expresess it abundantly. The deepest sym- pathy now gathers about you and your children, and all pray that the Lord's great love may hold up your fainting hearts. God bless you all. Faithfully yours, C. G. COMEGYS. II. ACTION OF THE OHIO TEACHERS' ASSOCIATION. The forty-fifth annual meeting of the Ohio Teachers' Association was held in 1891, at Chautauqua, New York. A part of the session of Thursday, July 9, was devoted to memorial services in honor of Dr. Hancock, Rev. J. S. Campbell, Thomas A. Pollock and F. E. Fuson, members of the Association deceased since the meeting of 1890. On this occasion Dr. Samuel Findley, of Akron, editor of the Ohio Educational Monthly, read a very complete, lucid and beautiful memorial sketch of the life and PASSAGES FROM DR. FINDLEY'S EULOGY. 107 character of Dr. John Hancock. This admirable tribute, prepared by request of the Executive Committee, is published in full in the Monthly, of August, 1891, as part of the proceedings of the State Association. To repro- duce it here would be to repeat many of the biographical details included in the Memoir to which the first part of this volume is devoted. I can not, however, forbear quoting a few of the concluding paragraphs of Dr. Find- ley's sketch, which set forth some general views that fittingly belong in this connection. PASSAGES FROM DR. FINDLEY'S EULOGY. ''Having thus passed in rapid review some of the leading events in the life of Dr. Hancock, there remains the more difficult task of attempting some estimate of his character and worth. And here the words he used concerning another are appropriate ; * I am painfully aware of how inadequate such an estimate must prove to be— for who shall be able to pluck the mystery from out the heart of man ? ' The story of Dr. Hancock's career is the old story of honesty, industry, self-reliance, and perseverance. In him was no guile. He loved right and hated wrong. He walked day by day on the line of rectitude. In nearly forty years that I have known him, I never heard a suspicion cast upon his honesty. He was a lover and a doer of the truth. His simplicity, directness, and natur- alness, in all relations, were admirable. He never left room for doubt as to his meaning or his position on any question of importance. He was an industrious worker. His broad and varied scholarship and his ready and effective use of his powers lo8 JOHN HANCOCK. were wrought out by his own industry. Early obstacles and privations did not deter him from putting to use the talent committed to him. He made great attainment and won high rank by doing a true man's honest work day by day. One of his assistants in the Commissioner's office, Mr. Allbritain, bears this testimony to his untiring industry : ' He was never an idler. When official duties did not require his attention, he would engage in reading ; and this was his custom, sick or well. He gave strict attention to his professional duties, from which nothing could divert him. When a candidate before the people, he gave no attention to politics, nor made any personal effort to secure his own election. Being asked on one occasion when he expected to begin his campaign, he replied : *' I shall begin my institute campaign very shortly.' " Though Dr. Hancock was an earnest man, there was in him a vein of humor which gave zest to his conversa- tion and made him the life of every circle in which he moved. His wit was of the chaste and refmed type, and always tempered with goodness of heart. He was magnanimous— great of mind and large of heart. There was nothing petty in his nature. No mean jealousies marred his intercourse with his fellow- workers. In all the years of my acquaintance with him, I never knew him to indulge in detraction or in harsh or unkind criticism of fellow-teachers. He was disposed to look upon the sunny side. Though he suffered financial embarrassment, and there came into his life some sharp sorrows, these were to him only as the lowering of a summer mist. He seemed to realize that the sky was above the clouds, and that soon all would be bright again. This touching tribute is paid by Mrs. Hancock : * We PASSAGES FROM DR. FINDLEY'S EULOGY. 109 lived together more than thirty-five years, and I never knew a more even and sunny temperament than his.' Dr. Hancock was not obtrusive in the expression of his religious opinions and experiences, but he was devout and earnest in his religious life. The last time I looked upon his face and heard his voice, he spoke of a book he had been reading that had cleared up in his mind some perplexing religious questions. Doubtless ere this the clear light of heaven has shown into his soul. His was not a faith in creeds or sects, but in God and humanity. His was a charity that '*suffereth long and is kind." Though always an attendant on public worship and a supporter of the church, it was not until since his call to the office of State School Commissioner that he made a public confession of his Christian faith. When residing in Cincinnati, he attended the Vine Street Congregational Church, of which the late Dr. Boynton was pastor, serv- ing for several years as one of its trustees. After removing to Columbus he united with the Broad Street Presbyterian Church, of which he continued a member to the time of his death. Of Dr. Hancock as an educator there is not time to speak fittingly ; and my poor words could add little to his fame, for his praise is in all the school districts. In his educational doctrine and practice he was what might be called a liberal conservative. He believed in progress, but had little faith in royal roads to learning. He was not apt to be carried away by the newest educational theories and devices. His batteries of wit and sarcasm were sometimes trained upon those conservatives who are sure the old way is always best ; but oftenest upon the camp of the radicals, who, in his own words, are ever discovering *the true educational philosopher's no JOHN HANCOCK. stone that is to transmute everything it touches into the golden ore of wisdom.' Did time permit, I might add pages of testimony showing the high estimate in which he was held where- ever he was known. A lady teacher writes from Springfield, Ohio : * We share a common sorrow in the death of Commissioner Hancock. To me he has been for many years, in an impersonal way, an inspiration and a help, because of a little talk I once had with him, which he no doubt forgot in an hour, but which strength- ened my hands and cheered my heart.' Miss Sutherland says, * Dr. Hancock always impressed me with the sterling honesty of his character. 1 felt that he could be implicitly trusted. Since being with him here in Columbus, I learned to think him more genial than before ; perhaps only because I knew him better. He believed much more in the "broadening of the mind by communion with the world's great writers than in cramming from text-books for a teacher's examination. This accounts in a measure for his great interest in the Ohio Teachers' Reading Circle. He met with our local branch last spring and read us a paper on Shakespeare, full of learning, wit and appreciation. We shall never forget that evening, for the rare intellectual treat was enhanced by the genial humor and charming cordiality of the reader.' I must not close this sketch without referring to Dr. Hancock's deep devotion to his work. He was, in a broad sense, a consecrated man. What is consecration but a holding one's self sacred, — a setting one's self apart to the service of a great cause ? And let us not forget that devotion to a great and good cause is ennob- REMARKS OF DR. ELLIS, OF HAMILTON. in ling to any soul. Our brother had that true nobility of soul which attends a consecrated life. What an inspiration there is to us all, and more espec- ially to the younger members of our profession, in the contemplation of such a life I He was a good man, a noble man. He served his generation well. He knew the secret of choosing the good and rejecting the evil, and it is that mainly that makes the difference in the lives of men.'* Dr. Findley was followed by Dr. R. W. Stevenson, Dr. Alston Ellis, Dr. J. J. Burns, and Prof. M. R. Andrews, whose words are here reproduced from the pages of the Ohio Educational Monthly. REMARKS OF DR. ELLIS, OF HAMILTON, OHIO. How inadequate are mere words to express the emotions ! How cold and pulseless does language seem when one would unburden the heart ! ** Man goeth to his long home, and the mourners go about the streets." These were the words of the wise man, uttered more than three thousand years ago, and they voice the experience of generations ever since. True it is that in the midst of life we are in death. " Leaves have their time to fall. And flowers to wither at the north wind's breath, And stars to set— but all — Thou hast all seasons for thine own, O Death ! " A little company of congenial spirits assemble around the festive board to enjoy an evening's entertainment. The evening is spent in helpful communion. A few months go by and the circle is broken ; death has carried off one of the shining lights of that company. The 112 JOHN HANCOCK. experience is repeated again and again. Many who are near and dear to us are taken away from us. It is well to turn aside from the active interests of life to pay a tribute of respect and drop a tear to the memory of one whom we love. The world goes on its way and soon forgets those who have gone before. How beautifully Dickens expresses that, when he speaks of the death of little Nell ! The little bird was stirring nimbly in its cage, while the heart of the child mistress was cold in death. These breaks in our ranks come to us as a shock, but they come to us with lessons that we may learn and profit by. Thackeray tells us that in Scotland they have a custom of celebrating the birthday of the poet Burns. The people come together in a simple manner, and the songs of Burns are sung ; and as the music rises, down the cheek rolls the tear, and there is a welling up of love and fellow-feeling as the words of the poet sink into their hearts. Can not something of this feeling be taken with us from this meeting when we think of the example left us by our departed friend ? Can we not take the lesson of his life to heart ? Can we not go away from here feeling more and more the kinship which should bind us together ? It has been said that one touch of nature makes the whole world akin. Is not this a touch of nature that should bind us in more loving accord than ever before ? The life of Dr. Hancock will not have been in vain if we can go out into the world and work more faithfully. How ineffably contemptible appear all the little spites and jealousies and envyings, in the face of death ! When I looked upon the face of my dead friend, it seemed to me that all the little petty feelings melted away. This REMARKS OF DR. R. W. STEVENSON, OF WICHITA. 113 influence should sink deep into our hearts. Let us go away from here remembering what he was, and the lessons that his life teaches. Let our sympathies be more strongly enlisted toward each other by reason of his life and labor here. REMARKS OF DR. R. W. STEVENSON, OF WICHITA, KANSAS. John Hancock died in harness, June i, 1891. In the National Educational Association, in educational assem- blies, and in the most obscure country districts of the State of Ohio, John Hancock will still live in his utter- ances, in his noble and Christian character, and in the spirit he has infused into all persons with whom he came in contact in the work of popular education. He was a Buckeye of Buckeyes. He began his career as a teacher and educator, — as most successful men have, at the lowest round of the ladder, — in an obscure rural district, and ended it, as we all know, at the top round of honorable promotion in the profession. His advancement to the high position he occupied was due to his industry, his power as a public speaker, his social nature, his hatred of sham and admiration of honesty in all things, united with ability of a high order. As a student of litera- ture touching every phase of popular education, history, philosophy, pedagogy, and the beautiful and good in general literature, in prose and poetry, he was a prince among schoolmasters. Those of us who knew Dr. Hancock intimately as a friend, a companion, a counselor, and reached his inner nature, know that he was a manly man, an earnest Christian gentleman, a great soul, with sympathies which 114 JOHN HANCOCK. led him to assist the unfortunate and exercise charity towards those who injured him by word or deed. He was ambitious to excel in all that adorned a man in intel- lectual and moral culture, that he might be more of a man in power and usefulness to humanity. For material things he cared little, for during his life his subtractions from the salary he earned were nearly equal to the additions. Yet he was a prudent man, never extravagant, but always generous and beneficent. But during his life his character was a continuous growth, for he heeded the injunction of the apostle Peter, — '' Giving all diligence, add to your faith, virtue; and to virtue, knowledge ; and to knowledge, temperance ; and to temperance, patience ; and to patience, godliness ; and to godliness, brotherly kindness ; and to brotherly kind- ness, charity." I mourn with a deep sorrow the loss of my intimate and trusted friend and brother in the cause of education. REMARKS OF PROF. M. R. ANDREWS, MARIETTA, OHIO. It is more than twenty years since I first had the pleasure to know and to love Dr. Hancock. As a young teacher I came to Cincinnati seeking counsel of him. I found him in the midst of that noted Bible war ; yet he was ready to give me his time, attention and advice. Since then I have known him at this Association, and personally I have always found him a friend in whom I could trust, a brother whom I could love ; and when I heard- of his sudden fall in the midst of his duties, it seemed to me I was called back again to the years of our bitter conflict, and here was another comrade taken from our ranks — one who was bearing the colors. I remember REMARKS OF DR. J. J. BURNS, OF DAYTON. 115 that in those days, when our regiment was stretched far out, when our ranks were thinned, it was the duty of those that were left to draw nearer together, and at the same time it drew us nearer to the colors. And so here, as we remember with love our fallen brother, may it draw us nearer to each other and the great principles which he has sustained. REMARKS OF DR. J. J. BURNS, CANTON, OHIO. My acquaintance with Dr. Hancock reaches back twenty-four years from this meeting. I first met him at a State Association. During those years I have been more or less intimately associated with him, and his life and mine have been pretty nearly together on a number of occasions. I have been his successor and his prede- cessor, his co-worker at institutes, and a guest at his house, and I feel that in all these years *' he was my friend, faithful and just to me." I would not trust myself, without forethought, to give any analysis of my estimate of his character, or even to give any outline of the many scenes in which he and I have been together ; but I can say, and say truly, that everything that has been said in his praise and honor this afternoon, and those other words so nobly spoken with reference to the lessons that we may draw from his life and character, and the great fact that we who are still living should remember that we must in our turn follow him, and the lesson that we may draw as to how we who are still on this side of the dark river should treat each other — every sentence has struck a responsive chord in my heart. Ii6 JOHN HANCOCK. III. ACTION OF THE NATIONAL COUNCIL OF EDUCATION. Through the courtesy of Dr. Selim H. Peabody, President of the National Council of Education, we are permitted to give in these pages, in advance of its publi- cation in the Proceedings of the National Association, a full report of the memorial services in honor of Dr. Hancock, delivered in a meeting held at Toronto, Canada, Friday, July 10, 1891. IN MEMORIAM. JOHN HANCOCK, PH. D. At the opening of the meeting of the afternoon session of Friday, July 10, the President, Dr. Peabody, said : FRIENDS IN COUNCIL: — While looking towards the preparation of this program, I remember the very earnest congratulation which I felt that no member of our body had been taken away during the year ; scarcely had the feeling gone from me when I received the sad intelligence that our beloved and distinguished colleague, John Han- cock, of Ohio, had passed away. I may not pronounce his eulogy. That duty is reserved for others much more competent than myself. He was one whom we all rejoiced to meet, whom we would remember with tender affection. We have assigned a portion of this session to memorial services in his honor, and I have first to call upon Mr- White, of Ohio, his nearest colleague, to present a tribute to the memory of our deceased friend and brother. REMARKS OF DR. E. E. WHITE. John Hancock was born on one of the hill farms back of Point Pleasant, Clermont County, Ohio, — ^the birth- REMARKS OF DR. E. E. WHITE. 117 place of General Grant — on the i8th day of February, 1825, and he died on the first day of June, 1891, in the sixty-seventh year of his age. He was the eldest of five children. His father, David Hancock, was born in West- ern Pennsylvania, and his grandfather, Henry Hancock, was a native of New Jersey. His mother died at the age of thirty-five. Dr. Hancock spent his childhood and youth on the farm, receiving his early education in the district school. In his later years he often referred with gratitude to one of his early teachers, who awoke in him a desire for reading and a taste for good books. At the age of nine- teen, Mr. Hancock taught his first school, and, during the four succeeding years, he taught school in the winter, and, in the intervening months, supplemented farm work by study, under the private tuition of Mr. James K. Parker, Principal of the Clermont Academy. In 1850 Dr. Joseph Ray, of Cincinnati, met Mr. Hancock at a teachers' gathering in Clermont County, and, on Dr. Ray's recommendation, he was elected first assistant in what was then known as the Upper Race Street School, Cincinnati, Mr. Andrew J. Rickoff being the principal. Here Dr. Hancock began his real life work. He used with alacrity the opportunities for self- improvement which the city afforded. He continued his studies, joined scientific and literary clubs, and other- wise widened his scholastic and literary attainments. The habit of reading thus formed followed him through life. It is but a few months since the writer heard him say playfully that he was then reading **two miles of Shakespeare daily " in the street car on his way to and from his office. In 1856 the honorary degree of Master of Arts was conferred on him by Kenyon College, and in Ii8 JOHN HANCOCK. 1876 the honorary degree of Doctor of Philosophy by the University of Wooster. On Mr. Rickoff' s election as Superintendent of Schools in 1853, Mr. Hancock became principal of the Race Street School, and a year later he became principal of the new First Intermediate School, a position which he filled for ten years. Mr. Hancock's work as assistant and princi- pal did much to shape early instruction in the Cincinnati Schools, and in these years he won a high reputation as a teacher and manager. In 1864 he resigned the principalship of the First Intermediate School to accept a position in Nelson's Business College. He was attracted to the position not only by the increased salary, but chiefly by the coveted opportunity for literary work as editor of ''The News and Educator," a new and bright newspaper which Mr. Nelson was then publishing. Mr. Hancock's work as editor showed thiDse literary resources which his later life so fully disclosed. He filled this position nearly two years and then accepted the duties of assistant in the editor's department of the publishing house of Sargent, Wilson & Hinkle, Cincinnati. A year later he turned away from literary work to accept the superintendency of the Cincinnati Schools— a position for which his previous training had been an excellent preparation. He filled this responsible position for seven years, to the high satisfaction of all interested in public education. He introduced few marked changes in school organization or instruction, but he strengthened the best features, increased the attention given to literary culture, quickened the professional spirit of the teachers, and gave emphasis to all those elements of discipline and instruction that make true and manly pupils. In the REMARKS OF DR. E. £. WHITE tig seventh year of his efficient administration, party politics, for the first time in the history of the schools, entered into the election of superintendent, and Dr. Hancock was retired. He next accepted the superintendency of the public school of Dayton, Ohio, filling the office with great fidelity and efficiency for a period of ten years. It was here that Superintendent Hancock seemed to recognize more fully than before the fact that all true instruction emanates from the individual teacher, and, while he called for good results, he gave the teachers larger free- dom in their work, and as a result, there was less of mechanism and more of individual influence and power in the schools. He stepped down from this place of great usefulness at the demand of party politics, while all who knew aught of his work in the schools, bore enthusiastic testimony to his efficiency as a superinten- dent and his high character as a man. In 1886, Dr. Hancock took charge, by State appoint- ment, of the Ohio education exhibit in the World's Fair at New Orleans, and on his return, he accepted the superintendency of the public schools of Chillicothe, to which he had been unanimously chosen. He filled the position with high satisfaction until November, 1888, when, in response to the wishes of the leading educators of Ohio, he was appointed, by the Governor, State Com- missioner of Common Schools, to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Dr. Eli T. Tappan. He accepted the position, though it involved considerable pecuniary sacri- fice, and entered with zeal upon what proved to be his final work. He filled the unexpired term, and in July, 1890, entered upon a full term, having been elected by a popular vote that happily attested the people's recogni- 120 JOHN HANCOCK. tion of his high qualifications and efficiency. In his first term he successfully inaugurated the new compulsory system, and in his second he secured amendments to the compulsory law, which greatly increased its efficiency. On Monday morning June i, 1891, he entered his office, and, greeting his assistants in his usual cheerful manner, took his seat at his desk to attend to corre- spondence. He had written only a few letters when he was stricken with paralysis, and without a word or sign, passed from his earthly service to the heavenly reward. He left a devoted wife and five worthy children, a daughter and four sons. Dr. Hancock devoted more than forty years to public education in his native state, and during most of these years, he took a prominent part in all important efforts to improve its educational policy. He was an early and earnest advocate of normal training, county supervision, the township system, and other measures of school progress. He served as a member of the State Board of Examiners, as a trustee of the McNeely Normal School — an institution founded by the late Cyrus McNeely, and by him entrusted to the direction of the State Teachers' Association — and also of the Ohio University at Athens, taking an active part in the establishment of the Normal Department therein. He was early in the institute work in the State, and long served as an instructor, few men receiving a more appreciative hearing. As early as 1852, he became a member of the Ohio Teach- ers* Association, in 1859 its president, and earlier or later filled nearly every position of responsibility in its gift. Nor were Dr. Hancock's interest and efforts in behalf of education confined to his native State. He became a member of the National Educational Association, then REMARKS OF DR. E. E. WHITE. 121 called the National Teachers' Association, at the first regular meeting held in Cincinnati in 1858. He was present at all the subsequent meetings — possibly with one, at most two exceptions — and always took an active part in the proceedings. He presided with great acceptance at the eighteenth annual meeting, held in Philadelphia in 1879, and before and since filled other important official positions in the Association with marked fidelity. He never sought honor or preferment in the Association, but he filled every position to which he was assigned by his fellow members with honor and success. But it is not Dr. Hancock's official services in the Association that should be most gratefully remembered, but his earnest devotion to its interests as a member. In the times that tried men's pockets, so distinctly remem- bered, he loyally sustained the Association not only by his presence and service, but by his means. He enjoyed the meetings and was always an attentive and discrimi- nating listener. In all the history of the Association, Dr. Hancock has been one of its leading and most influ- ential members. He specially enjoyed the meeting of old friends at these annual gatherings, and his good cheer, genial wit, generous sympathy, and warm friend- ship, always secured for him a hearty welcome. Dr. Hancock was present at the preliminary meeting for the organization of this Council, held in Chautauqua in 1880, and his name is in the roll of its first members. He was elected a member of the first executive com- mittee, and he subsequently served the Council on several other important committees. He was present at every meeting of the Council held, certainly since 1881,* * The Secretary's Minutes do not include his name in the list of members present at the first regular meeting in Atlanta in 1881. 122 JOHN HANCOCK. and was in his place at nearly every day's session. It need not be added in this presence, that no other member has shown greater personal interest in the wellfare of the Council, and that few, if any, have more frequently or intelligently participated in its discussions. The annual volumes of proceedings contain several reports and papers prepared by him — the last and probably the best (on "Coeducation") being presented at the last annual meeting in St. Paul. At the Nashville meeting in 1889, he read an admirable tribute to the memory of the lamented Dr. Tappan. At this meeting of the Council, we all sadly miss the familiar form and voice of our departed associate. We find ourselves waiting unconsciously for his entrance, as of old, but he comes not, and will not come again ; but his memory will long be green here. As the members of this body shall in the future gather at its annual council fires, memory will lovingly recall the genial humor, the earnest words, and the noble spirit of our lamented brother. It is difficult to present in a few sentences a just esti- mate of Dr. Hancock's ability and character. He was endowed with an acute and versatile mind, and also with an earnest desire for knowledge, and these qualities made a broad self-education possible. He not only read widely and thoughtfully, but he improved every oppor- tunity to widen his attainments He was an earnest student of education, but was more interested in its prac- tical than in its speculative phases. He was an alert and discriminating reader and listener, quickly seizing the more salient points of a writer or speaker and seeing their practical import and bearing. This quality and REMARKS OF DR. E. E. WHITE. 12? habit made him ready as a speaker, especially in conver- sation and discussion. But John Hancock's noblest characteristic was his high moral purpose and life. His personal habits were not only above criticism, but he was the soul of purity and honor and rectitude. Neither his character nor his word needed an indorser. He not only hated self-seek- ing, trickery, and double-dealing in others, but was himself incapable of indirection and subterfuge. He admired professional courtesy and honor, was true to his friends, and just and generous to those with whom he differed ; and no educator in Ohio had more friends and fewer enemies than he. Dr. Hancock was in the best sense a manly man, and his influence and sympathies were always with the right as he saw the right. He had a deep reverence for sacred things and a deepening religious faith. A few years before his death he made a public profession of religion, uniting with the Broad Street Presbyterian Church of Columbus. As he wrote of the noble Tap- pan, Johh Hancock was '' not only upright, but he was uprightness itself." In the past few years death has been busy among the Ohio members of this Council. Four of the original members from the State have been called to a higher service — W. D. Henkle, I. W. Andrews, Eli T. Tappan, and John Hancock, all men of blessed memory ; men who were an honor to the noble Commonwealth which they served ; men who represented its ripest scholarship, its highest character, and its best service in the cause of education. 124 JOHN HANCOCK. Mr. Rickoff referred to the tender relations which had subsisted between himself and the deceased as fellow- teachers, members of the little club for the study of psychology, and of the Round Table for years, then the intimate correspondence that followed : " I have lost one whose loss seems to remind me of the end of all things. Mr. Hancock was always true as the needle to the pole — hearty, earnest, sturdy in the maintenance of these principles, which were lofty." Dr. Harris said : — I remember meeting Mr. Hancock for the first time at Cleveland, Ohio. The National Association met there in 1870. I was greatly attracted to him from the first. He was always entertaining, and chaffed his friends with the most delicate quality of good humor. When the school superintendents of the west- ern cities — Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, Detroit, Indianapolis and St. Louis — formed their ** Round Table," holding their annual meeting in one or another of these cities and discussing, informally, the peculiarities found to exist in the educational system under inspection, Mr. Hancock was ever a central figure, full of thoughtful suggestions of his own, and generously appreciative of the views and achievements of others. He possessed a great heart — a man of humanity and a lover of the humanities. By the humanities we understand, technically, the studies that cluster around literature as a center. Mr. Hancock was especially a lover of good literature. I think that he drew his best inspiration for his educational work from the great poets and prose writers; and it was a fine inspira- tion that he derived from that source and communicated to others. Mr. Hancock was an ardent optimist, always looking to the future for better things than have been achieved in the past, and yet he never undervalued the REMARKS OF MR. ALLYN. 125 past. His optimism and his kindheartedness towards everybody, his love of literature and the aspiration kindled by its study, fitted him peculiarly for seeing the possibilities in school education, and made him a choice guide for a corps of teachers, and an ideal manager of a system of schools. In this Council of Education there rests upon us at this time a feeling of bereavement. We have lost a fellow member endeared to us by strong personal ties — a friend and a brother. Mr. ALLYN : — I became acquainted with Mr. Hancock in the winter of 1857-8 in Columbus, Ohio, at the Annual Meeting of the Ohio State Teachers' Association, a noble body of men, among whom were Lorin Andrews, James Garfield, John Canfield, Israel Andrews, Eli Tappan and Wm. Henkle, all now in the better land. Mr. Hancock at once attracted me by the frank friendli- ness of his manner, the vivacity of his spirit, and the earnestness of his advocacy of his convictions. And when later I removed to Cincinnati, where he was teach- ing, we grew intimate friends. We were fellow members of the little club already referred to, and I recall, as an illustration of what has been said of his purity of mind, this incident : One of our members was particularly fond of the writings of Swift, and would once in a while read passages from them. On one occasion, he read one of the most indecorous parts. It would have rejoiced any pure mind to see the look of Mr. Hancock's face as the reading ended, and his severe silence when it was expected that the laughter would come in. That man never attempted another such reading. Mr. Hancock was a man of sturdy common-sense honesty, and he was as genial as he was honest. He drew to himself 126 JOHN HANCOCK. children and young people, and especially boys, — with whom he was always a favorite. My son was a pupil in his school, and to-day John Hancock is his ideal of a perfect man and a gentleman. Mr. Hinsdale: — The deceased was remarkable for the good cheer which he carried into all circles in which he mingled. At St. Paul, last year, all who saw him must have remarked the fine condition in which Mr. Hancock appeared to be, both in body and spirits. It was remarked in my hearing that the paper which he read at that meeting was the best he had ever read in the Association. In his last conversation he spoke of his sound health, remarking that he **was made of iron," that he was never sick, and could read without glasses at sixty-five. Mr. Brown, talking from the standpoint of one of the boys whom he helped, said : — 1 desire to testify to the excellent service that Mr. Hancock did to the younger men of the profession. I knew him first in 1857, when I visited his school in Cincinnati, to learn something about school-teaching as it was done there ; and I shall never cease to be grateful to him for the service he did me as a boy in explaining fully everything that was done in his school, and why he did it. During the half day I spent with him, I think the subject of education was opened to me as I had never seen it before. His exceeding kind- ness won my affection at once. Afterwards my intimacy with him, both in correspondence and the discussion of school matters, was close, and for a short time I was a member of the Round Table of which the gentlemen have spoken. It seems to me that the strength of Mr. Hancock was his sterling character. REMARKS OF MR. PEABODY. 127 The President -. — We have presented our homage over the grave of our deceased brother. We hang our garlands upon his monument. The hour has been one of interest, and another hour might be spent in repeating and reenforcing the thoughts that have been presented in regard to him ; but other duties demand our attention, and unless there be some special message, we shall con- sider this service as complete. SELECTIONS FROM John Hancock's Writings. A PLACE OF SOLEMN DELIGHT. What a delightful yet solemn place is a great library. NOT TOO CONSERVATIVE. I am not such a conservative as that mentioned by Sidney Smith, who refused to look at the new moon on account of the regard he entertained for that ancient and respectable institution, the old one. IGNORANCE IS POWER. If knowledge is power, ignorance is power also ; and there must be an '* irrepressible conflict" between the two. ONE SECRET OF SUCCESS. It is related that when one of the Massachusetts regiments stopped in New York on its way to the defence of the National Capital, the first thing each soldier did after encamping, was to sit down and write a letter home. Therein is the secret of our success. Our boys know how to read and write. 130 JOHN HANCOCK. A NATION'S POWER COMPUTED. To find the solid contents of a nation's power is a very simple sum in arithmetic. We have but to multi- ply the breadth of its education by its height, and we have the correct result. NATURAL ABILITY VERSUS EDUCATION. It would be amusing, were it not almost pathetic, to observe the dazed discomfiture of those whose reliance is on natural ability when they have been made to feel how weak and vain is such ability when brought into opposition with full information and long and severe training. KNOWLEDGE AND MODESTY. Great learning tends to great humility. TEACH HOW TO TALK. Children should be taught to talk as though their suc- cess in life depended on it — ^for success in life does depend on it. GREAT THINKERS UTTER THEMSELVES. The great thinkers of the world, so far as we can find out, have been those who have been talkers either with tongue or pen. DON'T BE TOO SERIOUS. If we had no talk but what is termed serious, society would become a burden too great to be borne. A FULL COMPENSATION. Why, to be rid of a whole world full of foolish talk, would not tempt me to give up the wise sayings in Herr Teufelsdrockh's talk on clothes in Sartor Resartus. SELECTIONS FROM HANCOCK'S WRITINGS. 131 FIGHTING TALK. Let US condemn senseless babble in the severest terms, but let us not forget that a certain amount of talk — earnest talk, fighting talk — must always pre- cede action. THE TRUE PREACHER PLAIN-SPOKEN. The true preacher has opinions, and pretty decided ones; and opinions, especially if they be decided, are not fashionable. He, like John the Baptist and the Master, is apt to call men and sins by their right names,— to talk of generations of vipers, of hypocrites, and to inquire how they expect to escape the damnation of hell ; all of which is excessively impolite^ and grates on ears refined. THE TEACHER A REFORMER. The teacher is your true reformer. He, with patient labor, fashions the coming ages. All reform that is not of his work is transitory and uncertain. Intemperance, cruelty, and all kinds of immorality will continue until a better heart and mind have been formed in the people. And whose work but yours. Teachers, is it to begin this reform ? THE TRUE TEACHER AN INSPIRER. The true teacher implants in the minds of his pupils some of that enthusiasm for knowledge and love for what is good and great in thought and action, that dwell in his own mind and heart ; and what is more difficult, he teaches them to feel a portion of that scorn and con- tempt for all that is low and mean that he himself feels. GREAT MEN THE PRODUCT OF THEIR TIMES. We read of men, giant in intellect, who have con- trolled and directed the thought of their age ; but with a 132 JOHN HANCOCK. deeper philosophy, we see that this is not true, — ^that these men themselves were but the product of the great current of thought that runs through that age ; overtop- ping their fellows, it may be, like a monster wave riding high above the general level, yet having its base on the great ocean below. THE SCHOOL SYSTEM BASED ON SOCIAL EQUALITY. The public School system is founded on the same truth that lies at the base of the Christian religion, — the equality of men. It opens up to the poor, hopes and aspirations that never before attached themselves to their hard lot. While it is emphatically the poor man's friend, the rich also are glad to avail themselves of those advantages which no private school, however well con- ducted, can afford. Sitting at the same desks, reciting in the same classes, striving for the same prizes, governed by the same rules, such friendships and kindly feelings are formed among schoolmates that no succeeding social distinctions of life can wholly eradicate. The poor boy who works nights, mornings and Saturdays for his board, but stands head of his class, holds a much higher place in the estimation of his fellow pupils, than the wealthy leather-head whose place is at the foot. Indeed I know of no place on earth where one is so nearly estimated for what he really is, as in the public school. No fmery of dress, no airs of assumed superiority, can throw dust into the exceedingly wide-awake young eyes of its little community. It humbles the proud and elevates the humble. I think it almost impossible that any marked caste distinctions should arise in a society whose culture is obtained from the one common source, — a system of public instruction. SELECTIONS FROM HANCOCK'S WRITINGS. 133 THE LOWLY LABORER. There yet remains to be mentioned the great mass of laborers, who are neither farmers nor mechanics ; and the objector will ask, What is the use of the higher education to them, except to make them discontented with their lot ? I must confess to you that these people in their lowly condition interest me profoundly, and, as being of them, my heart is filled with irrepressible long- ings for their advancement in everything that may pertain to their physical comfort and mental elevation ; and I rejoice with great gladness when one of the sons of the people escapes from the narrow environment of his ignorance into the broad light of knowledge. How many a boy have I seen thus mount to the plane of a higher life, and draw his whole family up after him. TRIBUTE TO SOME LECTURERS. Who has heard the silver-haired Horace Mann deliver his " Address to Young Men," in his nervous and impres- sive manner, and not felt, struggling within, a holy desire for that pure and noble life portrayed with such solemn earnestness by the speaker, who had consecrated his high powers to that greatest of all causes, the cause of uni- versal education ? And what new thoughts have been wakened by the subtle disquisitions of Emerson, and the broad generalizations of Theodore Parker ! What pleas* ures have been enjoyed while listening to the classic periods of the scholarly Everett! With what delight have we heard the most unpretentious and perhaps greatest of American orators, the brave, the radical, the impracticable, the golden-mouthed Wendell Phillips ! Besides, there was him of rich and genial fancy, whose mellifluous speech ran on with the musical murmer of the 134 JOHN HANCOCK. summer brook, — whose soul \yas in loving harmony with all that is beautiful in nature, literature and art, — Thomas Starr King. And Henry Ward Beecher, too, both thinker and orator, and the most popular speaker of them all ; grave, humorous or pathetic, as suited his mood. OHIO'S SMALL COLLEGES. Two or three summers ago, at the meeting of the National Educational Association at Detroit, a distin- guished educator, in an address advocating State universi- ties, took occasion to speak in slighting terms of Ohio's small colleges. Now, I believe in State universities, and it is humiliating to every citizen of the leading State of the Mississippi Valley that we have no great State university ; and still more humiliating has been the mean and niggardly policy our State has pursued towards the two universities she does possess, and which she is bound by her honor and her interests to sustain and foster. I must, however, confess that I do not share in the prejudices against small colleges manifested by the speaker referred to. Let us have large colleges by all means, if we have the wherewithal to build them up ; but small colleges are not in themselves by any means evil things ; and I here venture the opinion that some of our small colleges are doing as good work in all the essen- tials of a solid education as many of the large ones, with all their boasted advantages. Bricks and mortar, and apparatus and libraries, and great endowments can not make a great institution of learning. It is the men at their head, and the amount and quality of heart and brain force they put into their work that do this. It is not the colleges which put forth the longest catalogues, but those which get the most earnest work out of their SELECTIONS FROM HANCOCK'S WRITINGS. 135 students that are entitled to the highest consideration. There is another excuse — if that is the proper word to use — for the existence of small colleges. Wherever an institution of higher learning is planted, there immediately begins to grow up, in all the surrounding region, an increasing desire on the part of the boys to go to college, and many do go who would never have done so had it not been for the stimulating influence of a college in the neighborhood. Now we have a great many small colleges in Ohio, more I believe than has any other State, and I am glad — in the absence of large ones, and would be in their company, if we had them — ^that it is so. So many more colleges, so many more circles of influence for the higher education ; and every additional young man drawn into college may be counted as so much clear gain to the community, in the way of power and good citizen- ship. But my advocacy for small colleges is limited by one inexorable condition, and that is, that they shall do genuine college work ; no letting down the standard of scholarship to secure numbers; no promises of learning to be obtained in the know-everything-in-six-easy-lessons way. I know of no reprobation too severe for those institutions, claiming to be colleges, which deceive those who trust to their claims and send them out into the world with the belief that they are educated, but much fuller of conceit than knowledge. A CHANCE FOR ALL CHILDREN. In this new education, which,— if we are worthy of it, — will reign among us at no very distant day, all — high and low, rich and poor — will receive according to their several necessities a due portion. There is nothing that stirs my indignation more than the oft-recurring talk 136 JOHN HANCOCK. which professional and literary men and capitalists — men who have never done a day's physical labor in their lives — condescendingly hand down to the common people, as nuggets of purest wisdom, through our leading magazines, at ten dollars a page, setting forth the danger of educating laboring men out of their sphere. Why, the American child has no special sphere. When he is born, all worlds of endeavor lie open to him, from which he may choose, well or ill ; but the responsibility is his, and that of no other creature in God's universe. To repro- duce the thought of one of the leading educators of our country : The one way to elevate the ignorant and dis- contented laborer is ever to keep in his sight the open door by which he may escape into a place of higher living and thinking ; and, I may add, anathemas be upon them who would attempt to shut that door in his face. TEACHERS MUST FACE CRITICISM. Teachers are peculiarly sensitive to the criticism of our school systems and methods by non-professionals. It is true that much of this criticism is unreasonable, and some of it ill-natured ; but a not inconsiderable portion of it is well-founded, and out of this portion much of the progress we make grows. We may ask that our schools be let alone ; but they will not be let alone, and we have no right to expect it, for there is no other public institu- tion of our country in which so many people have an interest. They will, therefore, be pried into on every side by numberless eyes, and we must bear, with what patience we may, the unjust attacks made upon our- selves and our work for the sake of the valuable hints to be found, from time to time, in what Carlyle would call a heap of *' clotted-nonsense.'* SELECTIONS FROM HANCOCK'S WRITINGS. 137 EDUCATION FOR EVERYBODY. I have but little sympathy with those who are afflicted with the sad fear that if all are educated there will be no one left to perform the manual labor of the world. Besides, if it were once settled that ignorance was always to be linked to that kind of labor, there would be small blame for those who should strive to escape it. For my part, I believe in no such necessity ; and if such a doctrine ever becomes recognized and acted upon in our country, society will stratify itself on the most odious of all caste distinctions, — ^that of rich and poor, — and the laboring population sink to the condi- tion of ignorant, hopeless serfdom. Moreover, drudging labor is being rapidly abolished. By means of the steam engine more than half of the world's burden of labor has been transferred from muscles of flesh to muscles of iron, and more than one-half of the remainder is per- formed by labor-saving machines, the motive power of which is other than steam ; and we shall, in an accel- erated ratio, be constantly whittling down the small frac- tion that is left, — so that it is no wild outburst of a baseless enthusiasm to predict that all the drudgery of life will be done, at no very distant day, by machinery, and that man's only part in it will be to stand by with a thinking brain to direct its forces. At any rate, if all the community were educated, its work would readily adjust itself to such a basis. The men of greatest powers and attainments would take the leading part in affairs, as now ; the next strongest the next places, and so on downward. There is, however, a great work to be done by scholars in this country. Upon them, more than upon any other class of the community, depends the duty of directing the thought and sentiment of our 138 JOHN HANCOCK. people into a channel more in accordance with our repub- lican institutions. They should assert the dignity of their pursuits, and at the same time assert the dignity of humanity, persuading all men that they " ought not rest in the use of slender accomplishments." They should show that the highest culture is not inconsistent with the humblest occupations ; that wherever there is room for honest work of any kind, there is a field for the dis- play of the best trained powers. Paul, one of the grandest characters the world has produced, with all his learning, declared with a proud humility of genuine independence and manliness, that he had supported him- self, and contributed to the support of others, by the humblest manual toil. Believing as I do that that higher education which touches and rouses all that is best in the intellectual, moral, and spiritual nature of man, to be of transcen- dent worth, yet I am, I trust, no foolish optimist. Education, however profound or extended, will not reform the world at once, — perhaps altogether, never. There will always be errors to combat, and wrongs to redress ; but he who appeals to a cultivated people has a vantage ground of incalculable value. We shall never achieve great things unless we work to a high ideal ; — and this is a truth young men just starting out into the world, with high hopes and aspirations can not treasure too sacredly. We shall not soon, if ever, have our whole population trained into the higher culture — ^for there may be some incapable of it — but we can make inroads into the enemy's country, and gradually enlarge the boundaries of this kingdom of high-living and high-thinking. To do this, all should join hands — public school men and private school men— to fill our colleges with recruits. SELECTIONS FROM HANCOCK'S WRITINGS. 139 There should be no jealousies between denominational and State institutions, but all work together to a common end. Let there be no egotism, either, on the part of col- lege graduates ; for not all are liberally educated who have received a diploma, — nor are all who have failed of a college training wanting in culture. A great scholar is to be reverenced everywhere. **His successes are the occassions of the purest joy to all men. Eyes he is to the blind ; feet is he to the lame." THE OLD-TIME SCHOOLMASTER. [REMINISCENCES.] The old-fashiohed schoolmasters verified the truth of that line they so often set as a copy to young aspirants in the chirographic line, — ^for they were most certainly *'many men of many minds." The earliest crop was largely of foreign birth, the Irish predominating. Much learning had not made them mad ; but much learning was not required. To be able to spell pretty correctly, to know the Arithmetic to the ''single rule of three, " and to write a good hand were deemed sufficient in most districts. The last named branch was always made the most of; and the article of agreement, which was always known by the first word of the name, was not infrequently made to shine forth as a resplendent work of art, in all the glory of mighty capitals and amazing and complicated flourishes. This *' Article, " as it was carried from house to house in search of sub- scribers (for the free school fund was frequently eked out by levying a certain additional sum on each pupil enrolled in the school), was carefully scanned, and if well done, duly praised throughout the length and breadth of the district. And many of the rough MO JOHN HANCOCK. pioneers, who were not unskilled critics, could them- selves, when their fingers were not too much stiffened by the use of the ax and the maul, write a hand that many a literary gentleman in these degenerate days would find it difficult to excel. It was their one accom- plishment, and they prided themselves in it. Their writing was none of your running, semi-angular kind of the Spencerian style, but what an old farmer of the time happily described as '*a round square hand." As I have said, the ** single rule of three " was gen- erally with **ye ancient pedagogue" the ^^ Ultima Thule^^ of arithmetic, and the aspiring youth who ven- tured beyond, was compelled to tread the thorny paths of mathematical knowledge alone. Some of the younger and more conceited sort of schoolmasters, who imagined they knew a thing or two not written down in the books of their fogy colaborers, used to bother the venerable heads of the latter by sending them certain stiff '* sums '* with a request for a solution. I remember one such sum that went the rounds of various schools, and was the means of heating up the galvanic batteries (for it is thus, my friends, the doctor designates the thinking apparatus of man) of many puzzled old polls for a whole winter. It ran to the effect that the head of a certain fish was so many feet long ; that its tail was as long as the head and half the body ; and that the body was as long as the head and tail both ; and wound up by enquir- ing the whole length of the fish. Whether any one found the answer to the question or not, I do not know ; but if any one did, I am sure it was done by the neat little rule of double position, as mental arithmetic and analytical solutions were then unknown. The teacher in the adjoining district to ours, after having spent a SELECTIONS FROM HANCOCK'S WRITINGS. 141 great deal of valuable time on this Sphinx's riddle, gave it up, with the declaration that if he never ate any more fish until he worked that sum, he should certainly depart this life without ever again tasting fish. But if the old-time schoolmaster's knowledge was not Hamiltonian in its proportions, still he was the foremost man in this respect of the people among whom he lived ; and if its boundary was narrow, that boundary was sharp and well-defined. 1 must repel as a foul slander, not based upon any general facts, the accusation sometimes made that these schoolmasters were often the slaves of intemperance. At any rate such was not the case within the circle of my knowledge. They were, on the contrary, in almost every instance, sober, moral and orderly citizens. They were sometimes crazy, though ; or, to put it in the milder language of the day, **a little touched in the upper story." The first and third of my own masters — and we changed masters pretty often, one scarcely ever teaching more than a quarter in one place — were of this kind. But they were both good teachers, and brought us on wonderfully. It may be that a little touch of insanity contributes to one's success in the profession. The eccentricity of the first of these exhibited itself chiefly in the way of ingenious devices for the punishment of the wicked. A big flat stone placed in the middle of the floor, performed duty as the dunce block ; and I think I may truly say, this dunce block was never cold during day- light hours from the beginning of that school to its close. If the occupant was a boy, the oldest, shabbiest and flabbiest sunbonnet that could be culled from the varied assortment worn to school, covered his head ; or if a girl was the occupant, a brimless and crownless hat (and 142 JOHN HANCOCK. there was no trouble in finding such) adorned her fair locks; and in either case, a pair of leather spectacles assisted the vision of the mischievous young eyes. The master had a genius in these spectacles, and he delighted himself with the invention of strange and grotesque forms for them. But even genius will nod. While he confined himself to leather, he trod impossibilities under his feet ; but his attempt at a huge pair of wooden ones, was a failure ; at which we all rejoiced exceedingly, — in a quiet way, of course. Soon after the close of his school he one day disap- peared from his home without any of the formalities of leave-taking, and as the signs of his insanity had been for some time growing more and more marked, great was the hubbub raised by his family, and the whole neighbor- hood was soon engaged in a search for the wanderer. Among these was a relative who was the unhappy possessor of a divining or mineral rod. By means of this mineral rod, in which the owner had never lost faith, even under the most trying circumstances, most strange and wonderful things had often come near being accom- plished. Many a chest, containing as it was believed untold sums of gold, buried deep in the earth, had the rod, in spite of devils and all other evil spirits that do guard such hidden treasure, unerringly pointed out, but when the sweating hunters had laboriously dug down to the point of actually striking their mattocks on the ringing cover of the huge iron box, some unlucky ejaculation, let slip in violation of those recondite rules of silence abso- lutely necessary to the securing of the coveted treasure, would enable the devil and his attendant imps to snatch the chest from under the very noses of the diggers, and leave nothing in its place but the well-known sulphury SELECTIONS FROM HANCOCK'S WRITINGS. 143 smell which always attends the proximity of his Satanic Majesty. No valuables were ever secured ; but that was not the fault of the rod, but of the diggers, who would always violate some one of the rules already spoken of as essential to the success of their enterprise — or some fear- ful sight or ghostly sound, such as mortal eye could not look upon or mortal ear listen to unmoved, drove them from their undertaking in wild and hasty flight. It was this wonderful rod that the relative brought forth on this sad occasion ; hoping that it might be as effective in pointing out the body of his poor lunatic kins- man, — which every one supposed must be lying dead in some out-of-the-way place, — as it had been potent in revealing hidden treasure. But for once he counted with- out his host. The rod made no sign. Like genius, it had its specialty, and could not be induced to depart from it. The search*continued with constantly failing ardor, for nearly two weeks ; but without result. A month or two after his sudden disappearance, the man returned, appa- rently in his right mind ; but he always maintained a determined silence as to where he had been or what he had been doing. The other schoolmaster to whom I have referred as being also ** a little cracked," was a good teacher, and of unusual scholarship for the times. He taught the summer school, and his oldest pupils were not more than twelve. He had that idiosyncrasy that so often accom- panies the earlier and milder stages of insanity in scholars — an irresistable inclination to use words of learned length and thundering sound. He used to lecture us little codgers in terms that might well have made an academi- cian gape. He also swung the good, limber, sharp beech gad with wonderful skill and alarming frequency. To 144 JOHN HANCOCK. me, however, he gave few " lickings," but made up the deficit in good advice— which I am sorry to say shared the usual fate of that article. Among other things he besought me, with tears in his eyes, never to become a schoolmaster. The fearful picture of the trials and sufferings of that persecuted profession which he held up before my boyish vision, you may be quite sure, was sufficient to induce me to give the required promise that 1 wouldn't. The closing exercises of his term were striking, and not to be easily forgotten. We had, in honor of the occasion, with the exception of an anomalous little darkey, combed our hair out sleek, and washed our faces until they shone again. Expectation stood on tiptoe. The master arose. His personnel was not altogether fascinating. His clothes were not of the most fashionable make. His coat was short, and grown sleek by wear ; his pants were short also — much too short to conceal the cerulean blue of his home-made yarn socks, — and exceed- ingly baggy about the knees. With all our partiality for him, we could not make up our minds that he was hand- some, nor graceful either. But when, after clearing his throat with a vigorous, hem ! and apologizing to us as being one not in the habit of public speaking, he spread forth his hand in what he doubtless conceived to be the manner of Paul before Agrippa, and began to pour forth a torrent of huge words, not one in ten of which conveyed to our minds the least meaning, Demosthenes himself might have envied the wonderful effect he produced on his gaping little audience. As for myself, when he concluded his remarks by presenting me with a small copy of Walker's Dictionary, bound in red leather, for SELECTIONS FROM HANCOCK'S WRITINGS. 145 having been oftenest head of the spelling class during the term, I was tremendously overcome. Alas, poor fellow ! I wonder where in the wide earth his lot may now be cast. He was as unfitted to battle with the world as Sterne's poor Maria. I certainly ought not to speak lightly of his great misfortune, nor of him ; for he taught me to love reading, and lent me books, most of them beyond my years and capacity, but still useful in awakening faculties and aspirations that had before been largely dormant. Few perhaps realize the debt they owe to their teachers, but I would not be ungrateful to this harmless, crazy, good-hearted instructor of my childhood. THE SPELLING SCHOOL. Thirty years ago (in those primitive times), spelling was the branch of instruction that received most, and in some schools almost exclusive, attention. All the scholars, in addition to their other regular spelling les- sons, spelled twice a day in class — just before dinner, and again at night. It was a custom for the teacher to permit these two lessons to be studied aloud. No sooner was this permission given, than all the noise that had been pent up for the day, like a dammed and swollen stream, broke forth in one impetuous torrent of mingled howls and screams, every scholar yelling out his lesson on his own hook, and in his highest key, making the little old school-house rock again. The spelling was always taught orally ; and a conse- quence was, that many who could spell every word in the spelling book, in that way, when they came to write, blundered on the most common words. It was not sup- posed possible, either, that a boy could learn to read until 146 JOHN HANCOCK. he had gone through his speller, at least one or two times. Most of the Friday afternoons were spent in a spelling match, in which the whole school took part, and which often became very exciting. But this excitement culminated when such a match was made between two schools. In those days, one John C. Smith's schools were famous for their proficiency in the noble art under consideration. He had long taught in one district, and one winter sent forth his challenge to all the regions round about to come forth and measure arms with him. For a long time no one dared to take up the glove ; but finally our district of Franklin, with many misgivings, came to the conclusion that this boaster should not enjoy the triumphs of the championship without a con- test. Jack Tompkins, a nervous, white-haired boy of twelve, was Smith's right hand man, in whom he reposed unbounded confidence, and the marvellous things that Jack could do in the spelling line, was com- mon talk, especially among youngsters, ail around the country. What Jack couldn't do in bowling down hard, knotty, polysyllabic words it was generally believed it wasn't worth while for anybody else to attempt. The eventful night came ; Smith's best spellers were ranged on one side, and an equal number of our picked lads and lassies on the other. Every foot of space in the not over-roomy log school-house was filled with interested spectators. The spelling began at the head ; but alas for Smith ! His leader was nervous, and but a few words had been out before the invincible Jack went down, and the Franklinites won an easy victory. The return match resulted in an almost equal discomfiture of the foe, and Smith and his boastings disappeared from the arena, SELECTIONS FROM HANCOCK'S WRITINGS. 147 while the Franklin School for many long years was the undisputed orthographical champion. The night spelling schools, too, like their half cousins the singing schools, combined instruction and amusement in a very pleasing way. I know not how it is now, but courting in the country was then, as I have been informed on satisfactory evidence, a very serious affair, and few were bold enough to plunge into it directly, some excuse for coming into the presence of the fair sex being generally considered indispensable. This excuse the spelling school afforded. It was noticed, too, that the Captain in a match, unless he was extremely fond of honors indeed, always chose the girl he loved best with- out reference to her ability as a speller. The pairing off, too, on starting for home was a beautiful verification of the law of double elective affinity. Arithmetic ranked next in importance to spelling. Mental arithmetic was of course unknown. Neither was ciphering taught. The scholars laboriously grew into it by dint of much sweat — and rubbing of the brain- pan. The teacher afforded no other assistance than to do the *' sum, "(almost always without any explanation) for the pupil when the latter found himself as he termed if stuck," no attempt being made to understand the teacher's work. Many scholars kept what was called a ciphering book, in which was copied in the neatest and most painstaking manner the work of every example performed to the minutest particulars. This afterwards became an heirloom in the author's family, and was looked on by his descendants as an incontestable proof of his immense mental ability. Another thing that made the progress of arithmeticians slow was their neglect to learn the tables as a preliminary work ; and many a 148 JOHN HANCOCK. student went far into the arithmetic without a knowl- edge of the multiplication table. By keeping the book open at its page, so as to see what six times six, etc., made, without the bother of committing it to memory, they managed to get along at a snail's pace to be sure, but with a tolerable certainty as to results. MANUAL TRAINING. What then is the proper work of a system of schools? I have no hesitation in maintaining that the main purpose of these schools should be to teach youth how to obtain information from books, and to form their tastes and characters according to a high ideal through the same agency. Other instruction should be relegated to the home, the church, the workshop, and special schools. I do not believe it is practicable or desirable to teach sewing, or cooking, or carpentering, or blacksmith- ing, or farming in the common schools. These occupa- tions can all be far more successfully taught elsewhere. Neither do I believe the knowledge of how to handle tools to be of such supreme value that our schools, from the grammar grades upwards, should be turned into workshops; and I am thoroughly convinced that Pro- fessor Woodward and others of his way of thinking greatly exaggerate that value. Yet I would not be thought to be without sympathy with this movement ; for though it should not, as I think it ought not, become an integral part of our com- mon school system, nor accomplish all its sanguine friends expect, it will do good. As has been already said, the education that makes philosophers is a very noble one, yet but a small part of mankind can live on philosophy ; and I agree with Professor Woodward that SELECTIONS FROM HANCOCK'S WRITINGS, 149 we should not sacrifice the ninety-nine who do not complete our elaborate course of study to the single one who does. The mass of men must always be bread- winners with their hands; and it will be a great thing for the world when these hands shall come to have brains in every finger's tip of them. I believe it is well that our youth should be familiarized with this destiny before they leave school, and be led by training, so far as such a thing is practicable, to look forward to a life of manual labor, not as something to be avoided at almost any sacrifice and hazard, but to be embraced with glad- ness, as worthy of those possessed of high attainments. If we shall fail in this country to get this done by some means, in just so much shall we fail in our peculiar insti- tutions and natural life. To bring this about, we should multiply manual training schools for the benefit of youth who may have completed the grammar school course, or even for grades below, if experience should prove it to be desirable. THE THINKING FARMER. Independence is one of the first requisites to true manliness ; and no one on the round earth has so much of it as the farmer; and if he is not the most intelligent of men, it is his own fault. A position between two plow handles, 'with a good team in front, is one of the most favorable for study that 1 can conceive of; it gives the two most essential conditions for thinking: isolation and repose of mind. There one can take up any subject of study in the morning, with the certainty that he shall have the whole day to turn it over in his mind, and view it in every possible light, without the apprehension of having his train of thought broken by some purposeless I50 JOHN HANCOCK. visitor. The oxygen of the open air keeps the brain supplied with pure blood, and the whole frame filled with exhilarating nerve force. A day of such study ought to be more fruitful of solid results than two days passed in the close atmosphere of a library. The book of nature lies always open to the farmer's eye, but the misfortune is he has not been taught to ''see through the spectacles of books," as Dryden has it, and is blind to all Nature's beauties and delights. But anoint his eyes with the euphrasy of knowledge, and he shall fmd in the growth of plants, in the variety and habits of insects and birds, matter of study to meet the demands of the most enthusiastic botanist or naturalist ; in the analysis of his soil, work for a skillful chemist; and in the rocks beneath it, a great book on whose stony leaves the fmger of God has written the history of crea- tion. The sparkling dewdrops, — a radiant gem in every leaf, — ^the rosy tints of aurora, the crimson evening sky with golden bars, — an enchanting picture on the Creator's wide-spread canvas, — delight his sight with ever-recur- ring beauties. And the low of kine and the songs of birds greet his ear with exquisite music , thus completing the circle of his innocent pleasures. Then come on the long and peaceful winter nights, following days the labors of which have been just sufficient to awaken a healtey glow and keep the blood in circulation ; nights to which the society of noble books lend an ever-renewed charm. If he be a classicist, he can take down his Homer or Virgil, and renew the vigor of his schoolday-thinking by communion with these grandfathers, as it were, of human culture. Or he reads some new work on science, and thus keeps pace with those investigations which are pushing themselves out into the remotest corners of the SELECTIONS FROM HANCOCK'S WRITINGS. I^I universe. Or he may — best of all, perhaps — comfort and build himself up by reading the classics of his own language. Don't tell me there is no place in the farmer's life for the higher education ! No life needs it so much. He is more cut off from associating with his fellows than most men, and is consequently more thrown on his own resources for his mental pleasures ; and if he start without the advantages of a good education, he is apt to fall into narrow ways of thinking, and suffer his mind to rust out, after a most deplorable fashion. 1 do not mean to say the masses of farmers have yet attained to the ideal life I have just attempted to sketch, — and sorry am I that I can not say it, — but 1 trust I have not altogether failed in pointing out the possibilities of such a life to him who brings to this vocation an education which will fit him for the highest rational enjoyments ; and that if he fails in reaching this ideal, the fault does not lie in his occupation but in himself. MASON DOAN PARKER.* Friend White :— An old friend of yours— a brother to me — has gone to the better land. Mason D. Parker died on the 29th of March. Not only to your heart, but to hearts in every part of the State, I know this announcement will send a pang of grief, — for none knew him but to love him. In obedience to a request of the teachers of Cincin- nati, and the dictates of my own fef lings, I send you a sketch of the life and character of our departed brother. Notwithstanding he was the playmate of my childish years, and my companion in manhood, I would not por- tray his character in high toned colors, but with that rigid adherence to truth which would, if he were living, * Written in 1865. 1S2 John HANCock^ be most gratifying to his own modest nature : yet I feel that none but a loving hand ought to paint the quiet, useful life, and the pure, tender heart of this faithful schoolmaster. Mason Doan Parker was born in Clermont County, Ohio, in the year 1828. He received his education in an academy established on his father's farm twenty-five years ago, and of which his oldest brother has been Prin- cipal from its foundation. His father was a man of strong native powers, which he cultivated by a diligent reading; his mother had a taste for literature; and almost the sole thought of both was for the education of their children. The father was a reformer in the best sense of the word, — always among the foremost in good works. He was the first public advocate of the temper- ance reform in the West ; and was always an uncompro- mising anti-slavery man. It was under such guidance that the subject of our sketch grew to manhood. He fully imbibed his father's principles, and during his entire life was a devotee of total abstinence, and an earnest hater of oppression. In 1849 he removed to Cincinnati, and for two or three years was engaged as a clerk in a mercantile house. He then commenced his career as a teacher, — as an assistant instructor in the Cincinnati House of Refuge, which position he filled for about a year. He then became connected with our city schools as first assistant teacher in the Tenth District. He became, in a year or two, the Principal of the same school, and suc- cessively of the Sixth District, the Second Intermediate, the Eighteenth District, and again of the Second Inter- mediate. This last position he filled at the time of his death. SELECTIONS FROM HANCOCK*S WRITINGS. 153 These changes from school to school were not entirely agreeable to him, as, he often remarked, they did not give him a fair chance to show the results of his working powers ; for he could scarcely get settled into a place, and begin to make his influence felt, before he was required by the Board to organize a new school. But that he was required to do this, was complimentary to him, for he was chosen for this kind of work on account of his superior executive ability. From his entrance into the profession, he interested himself in the State Association, and almost at once became an active and influential member. He was as prompt and careful in discharging the duties pertaining to the general success of the cause of education, which were from time to time imposed on him, as he was those more specially belonging to his school-room. Until last sum- mer, I think, he missed but one of our meetings. As a teacher, his success was unqualified. He was indefatigable and thoroughly conscientious in his labors. He not only gave an intellectual assent to the fact that his work was the training of immortal souls, but seemed to feel it to an extent I have never seen in another. Indeed this consciousness seemed, at times, to weigh him down by its burden. His teaching was broad and genial. All the fine powers of his mind were brought into play by it,— his accurate knowledge of facts, his discriminating literary taste, his airy and brilliant fancy, his warm sympathies, and his rich and quaint humor. He was rich in expedi- ents in imparting instruction, and had a clear and felicit- ous style in presenting a subject. His manner was animated and impressive. But his designs reached far beyond the mere culture of the intellect. His moral 154 JOHN HANCOCK. teaching was not a matter of theory only, but received as careful attention as the several, branches prescribed in the course of study for his school. While it was entirely free from cant, it was reverent ; deriving its life not from precept alone, but from a blameless example. He strove in all his teaching to render knowledge attractive, — so attractive that the school should be to his pupils the pleasantest place in the world. We all remember his lecture, delivered before the Association, on The Model Teacher. It has often occurred to me, since hearing it, that he himself was the best example of his beautiful ideal. His conscientiousness in regard to the discharge of his duties, was almost morbid, and it led him to worry when things in his school, did not go exactly as he thought they should, to a degree that I think was gradually under- mining the tone of a nervous system that was originally a very, vigorous one. However this may be, he has his reward for his labors in the high regard those whose young feet he has led into the pleasant paths of knowl- edge will ever entertain for his memory. Mr. Parker had literary ability of so high an order that, though he had written comparatively little for the press, his friends were led to believe that, had he chosen literature for his vocation, he would have attained to eminence in it. His quick perception of individual traits, and his exuberant and fanciful humor were striking, and in his pen found a ready and graceful expression. But it was most in the capacity of a genial companion that our departed friend endeared himself to us all. So winning was his way that none could resist it. He com- pelled men to love him. In conversation, the play of his fancy, of his wit and his humor was constant, and his SELECTIONS FROM HANCOCK'S WRITINGS. 155 resources inexhaustible. And yet his wit, unless some great wrong or mean act were to be impaled, had nothing bitter in it. He was the most unselfish man I have ever known, — always thoughtful of the comfort and interest of others. His courtesy was that of the Christian gentle- man, whose manners are based upon the Golden Rule. When the National Guards were called out, a year ago, he responded to the call with alacrity. He was glad to be afforded an opportunity to contribute his mite of personal service to the cause of his country. He himself thought, as we all thought, that he would, from his muscular activity and vigor, be able to endure the priva- tions of camp-life better than almost any other member of the Teachers' Company. And he did sustain himself well until the march the regiment made, about the middle of June, from Fort Powhattan to City Point. In that, to our surprise, he broke down. He had not yet entirely rallied from this, when, shortly after our arrival at Spring Hill, on the Appomattox, he had a very severe attack of illness, from which he never entirely recovered. He was reluctantly forced to give up all heavy duty thereafter. He grew weaker from day to day without any well defined cause ; and we were seriously afraid, at times, that he would never see that home, endeared to him by so many precious ties, again. Yet during all this time of ill health, his wit and humor never ceased their flow, and were the life and talk of the little camp of the two compa- nies, which were so long together on detached duty. On his return home he felt obliged to resume at once the duties of his profession ; and the burden of the man- agement of a new school proved too much for the little strength he had left. His vital powers gave way under the pressure. A nervous fever set in, accompanied by a 156 JOHN HANCOCK. congestion of the lungs. He was so loth to give up, that he continued in school long after he should have taken to his bed. He had but little sound sleep during the whole of his last illness; and his talk during his troubled dreams was almost entirely of his school. His fevered, restless hand would mark out in the empty air the figures and diagrams he had so often drawn upon the blackboard in his school- room. When awake, his mind at all times was serene and cheerful; and the old flashes of humor were not infrequent. Though he believed to the last he should recover, he talked of death with the peaceful calmness of the Christian who has nothing to fear. His last words, as his friends stood around his bed, his wife's hand clasped in his, were — " I am tired. I must sleep now." And gently, as an infant on its mother's breast, he fell into that slumber that shall know no waking till the resurrection of the just. The great heart, with all its noble aspirations, its infinite longings and boundless love, was stilled forever. THE COMMON MAN.* The power of a great idea can not be estimated. It subordinates the mightiest physical forces to its own uses. Pile in its way obstacles mountains high, and at a single leap it shall surmount them all. It is divine; creating out of chaos for itself a world of order and beauty. Neither can we calculate the value of that small class of men who stand above their fellows, and, by the capacities of their minds, in every age direct and control the destinies of nations, and build the very foun- * First read before the Y. M. C. A. of Cincinnati, 1872. After- wards before the Y. M. C A. of Dayton. SELECTIONS FROM HANCOCK'S WRITINGS. 157 dations of society itself. Says America's greatest thinker: *'It is natural to believe in great men. We call our children and our lands by their names. Their names are wrought into the verbs of language; their works and effigies are in our houses, and every circum- stance of the day recalls an anecdote of them." In some sense, hero-worship elevates all who give them- selves up to it with a hearty enthusiasm. A boy who shall be brought up on a diet of Plutarch's Lives, and shall follow with sympathy the career of his mighty heroes— men and demi-gods — will, if he do not himself arise to greatness, come close enough to his great exem- plars to have the pathway of all his subsequent life irradiated by the serene brightness of their noble char- acters. And rapid and sure is the decline of that people who shall teach its youth to look upon men of high thought and endeavor with contempt or indifference. History troubles not herself about the masses of men. She seizes upon some individual great in thought or action and makes him the type of his age. She delights to show how her hero by the transcendent power of genius is enabled to shape in some degree the intellectual growth of all future ages. She paints in her most resplendent colors the career of poets who have created for themselves and for all men worlds of ineffable beauty and glory. She traces on her brilliant page the career of statesmen who — by the force of a will unyield- ing as granite, a boundless ambition, a persistent and untiring energy, and with an intuitive knowledge of human nature which enables them to spy out the most secret springs of human activities — hold in their thrall millions of men, and set up and pull down according to their own pleasure or caprice. She paints, too, in lurid 158 JOHN HANCOCK. and enduring colors the career of the military heroes who rock the globe with the tramp of mighty armies, and stain the fair face of nature all over with the crimson hues of their terrible victories — hues which all the tears of widows and orphans can never wash away. Nor has she neglected the men mighty in speech who instruct and charm by their eloquence. And nowhere else does she present so grand a picture of the might of man as in the great orator whose lips are touched with a coal from off the altar of lofty purposes. Men hang upon his utter- ances entranced. Their hearts melt with tenderest pity or kindle with indignation at his words. The hoary walls of prejudice that defend still more ancient wrongs crumble into fme dust at his breath. In him the dumb slave fmds a voice. By him are they whose hearts are ready to faint lifted up; the righteous who have suffered from slander's keen tooth vindicated; the coward made a very lion in courage, and the wise and good comforted by the vision of the future triumph of the right. Neither are those who work in more quiet fields quite forgotten. He that measures the heavens with a rule, pierces the remotest boundaries of space, and weighs the universe in a balance ; and the workers in other sciences and the arts, who build high the everlasting memorials of their greatness in discoveries and inventions which civilize the race and prolong life, gratify the tastes, and relieve men from the drudgery of servile labor, — one and all receive a certain meed of praise. But it is not of these giants of the race that I desire to speak to-night. The earth is full of the glory of their achievements, and we may pass them by for the time without injustice, assured that they will never want a chronicler. Nor shall I stop to speak of the merchant SELECTIONS FROM HANCOCK'S WRITINGS. 159 prince whose commerce whitens every sea, and who car- ries to far off isles, the remotest hamlets, and most lone- some valleys, civilization and the comforts and refine- ments of life. Much less shall I stop to bother with that numerous class of people who are neither good nor great, who have forced themselves into prominence by the devious ways of the politician and his kind; nor with those who, having grown suddenly rich by illegitimate ways, wall themselves about with money bags, call themselves the "aristocracy," and are conspicuous in the inane doings of fashionable life, — who strut and swell and glitter, and look down on the masses of men, speak contemptuously of them, and generally by their foolish antics make themselves food for the inextinguish- able laughter of all sensible people. Such we may dis- miss from our consideration with a contemptuous wave of the hand and the benevolent and philosophic address of my uncle Toby to the fly he found in his soup : "Go, poor devil! the world is wide enough for thee and me." We are to consider, then, for the remainder of the hour, the Common Man, — him who neither thinks great thoughts, performs mighty deeds, nor has high aspira- tions, — but who, notwithstanding these comprehensive negations, contains within himself possibilities of labor, of thought, of moral elevation, and of happiness. We are to speak to-night of the man who shall never appear before the world in the guise of a philosopher ; shall never write a poem or a novel, an essay or a history, nor, mayhap, even attempt a newspaper article ; — of the man who in bygone times was always, a drudge, and often a slave, with no rights his more intellectual and powerful master was bound to respect, and who was looked down upon by this master as of little more worth l6o JOHN HANCOCK. than the ox by whose side he toiled; of the man who, in modern times, has been the butt of the cynical sneers of the Carlylian race of critics and philosophers ; of the man who has, in the general, patiently and good naturedly borne all their taunts and sneers, and has gone on sturdily doing the duty that lies nearest his hand, and whose plodding industry executes the marvelous works planned by the fertile brains of others. And with all his slowness, his mental and moral powers but partially developed, is not this plodder, forever chained to the rough oar of labor, worthy our sympathy, — nay, not our sympathy only, but of our profoundest respect? Though not great, he is indispensable to the world's progress, and often his character reaches a moral and religious heroism not often attained by his more fortu- nate fellows. Not seldom in history has this heroism reached the sublime heights of martyrdom ; tender youth, vigorous manhood, and trembling age alike facing death in its awfulest forms without blanching, their souls ascending from the dens of savage beasts or flame of fagots upon hymns of lofty triumph, leaving behind such precious testimony to the innate grandeur of humanity as makes us proud — even when our hearts are sickened by corruption and wrongs on every side — that we belong to the race. There is a quiet pluck and honesty of work about the Common Man that oftimes enables him to pass genius on the road. Whilst talent is uncertain and restless, he is stable and solid; the very rock on which society is built. No restless ambitions entice him abroad into the great world to attempt the slippery heights of renown. He is true to his country, faithful to his friend, and constant to his family. From his tough and vigorous stock, too. SELECTIONS FROM HANCOCK'S WRITINGS. l6l spring the men of splendid endowments of body and mind, who work themselves upward, step by step, expanding in the broader and freer atmosphere as they climb, and end by becoming makers of history. Yet notwithstanding his sterling qualities, notwith- standing the respect that is due him on account of the humanity that is in him, there is a reverse side to the picture — a side not only sad, but gloomy. Only too often he is ignorant ; and he possesses no sure talisman to enable him to escape the vice and crimes which follow in the wake of ignorance. Too frequently, also, the life he leads is an animal life, — sometimes a very besotted animal life, passion governing instead of reason ; his earnings instead of being spent for food, education, and the things that make home comfortable and pleasing, are squandered on drink and more debasing indulgences. Often he lies at the very foot of the ladder of ascending humanity without the ambition to place his foot on the first round, even. How to sweep away the cloud of ignor- ance that darkens his path with all its involved vices and crimes; how to breathe into a dead nature the breath that shall liberate its better forces and make it a living soul — ^this may well be termed the problem of humanity. A spirit of unrest, of questioning, is the beginning of life and growth. The soul itself must be touched by the Ithuriel spear of a divine power before it shall stand forth in its majesty, ready to do and dare great things. No lasting reforms can be impressed on men from with- out. Such may take hold for a little space, but soon their grasp relaxes, and their effects disappear. Tem- perance reforms, for instance, — worthy of all praise as they are, — may accomplish something towards reclaiming here and there an individual drunkard, and something i62 JOHN HANCOCK. more towards preventing men from becoming drunkards, but their influence must, from the very nature of things, be uncertain and spasmodic in communities cut off by- ignorance from intellectual enjoyments. The members of such communities are tormented by a craving for something that shall divert the thoughts from the daily routine of plodding drudgery, — a craving which is natural and universal ; — and lacking pleasures which are pure, they will satisfy this craving by those which are bestial. Hence, any permanent reform must be a growth from within which shall gradually unfold in the fertile soil of man's better nature. The history of the race shows that the elevation of a people in wisdom and virtue has always been slow ; so slow sometimes as scarcely to be perceptible in a genera- tion. And yet — not unlike the upheaval of some mighty continent from the force of internal fires, which is hardly lifted more than a single foot in a century, but which in the long course of geologic ages is raised from ocean depths into the marvelous effulgence of God's sunlight, to be clothed with beauty and become the happy homes of millions of rejoicing creatures — ^this moral movement of the race goes on, raising men into a purer spiritual atmosphere and a brighter intellectual life. But this movement, so slow in the past, we may be permitted to hope will be greatly accelerated in the future. The signs of it are numerous and evident. The telegraph that flashes a thought around the globe in an instant, and the mighty steam-press thrusting knowledge into every nook and corner of the world, give assurances of it. Indeed, all the combined forces that act upon and through society, and which we term the spirit of the age, seem to work to the same end. SELECTIONS FROM HANCOCK'S WRITINGS. 163 Our age is one of unrest and a tremendous mental activity which pierces the very heavens and inquires into the nature of all things. In social investigations this activity is not, as heretofore, confined to the doings, the wants, and the destiny of what are termed the higher classes. The Common Man, his doings, wants and destiny, are also brought into wonderful prominence. The question, the so-called higher classes begin to see, is no longer, **What shall we do with him," but '* What will he do with us ?" And to them.this question comes not unaccompanied with a vague sort of terror. Here is a giant who has slept, with rare intervals of waking, ever since the history of man began, and now he threatens to rouse himself in awful earnest, and it looks as though no anesthetic could be found powerful enough to put him to sleep again. To pat him on the back, and call him a good fellow, will scarcely answer the purpose. What, then, is to be done with him ? Shall we strive with him for the mastery ? The strife will be between intellectual strength, and a blind force — terrible in its pitiless inertia. And though the former must in the end come off trium- phant, may it not, for a time at least, be worsted in the conflict ? May not this giant of the masses become conscious of his powers, — with his passions fired by the memories of wrongs heaped upon him through untold centuries and his greed stimulated by the prospect of the wealth that lies within easy reach of his grasp, — turn upon society itself and hurl it into dreadful chaos ? Instead of attempting to hold him in the ancient thrall, will it not be far better to invite him into a common brotherhood, and endeavor to render him entirely worthy of it ? One of the problems that most pressingly demands a i64 JOHN HANCOCK. solution is what is called the labor question, — and a knotty sort of sum it is, too. And it is not strange that being the most interested party, the laborer himself should be anxious to try his hand at its solution — and a pretty fist he has made of it thus far ! He sees, or thinks he sees, that others reap the fruits of his toil ; is naturally dissatisfied with his present condition and future prospects, and concludes there must be something radically wrong in the constitution of society itself. But his proposed remedies for this wrong, as might have been expected, are of the wildest and most chimerical sort ; for he who attacks this problem without having a thorough knowledge of political economy does a fool- hardy thing. (Perhaps I ought to except from an asser- tion so sweeping that race of statesmen of which our country is so prolific. To them all the wisdom of the ancients is as foolishness, and, without study or thought, they see intuitively, as it were, the right thing to do and the best method of its accomplishment.) To meet in labor conventions, to be deluged by ''the loose expecto- rations" of frothy speech from addle-brained dema- gogues, whose howl, to their own ears, is most sweet music, and then, to cap the climax of absurdity, by resolving that rents are a deadly sin and that property is robbery, contributes about as much to the solution of this problem as would a powerful and eloquent denun- ciation of the inclination of the earth's axis, or the pas- sage of a resolution denying, with great unanimity and emphasis, the force of gravity. For the crazy enthusiast who believes what he preaches, and who, however mistaken he may be as to the means he adopts to carry out his purpose, has a sincere desire to benefit his fellow-man, we have charity SELECTIONS FROM HANCOCK'S WRITINGS. 165 and that respect which is always to be rendered to honesty and earnestness ; but for the bellowing dema- gogue, whose ignorance is only equaled by his impu- dence, who strives to sow dissensions and hatred among the different classes of society to forward his own selfish designs, we entertain no feeling but a profound contempt. Another result of the intellectual activity of our times is a new investigation of the grounds of beliefs long since considered settled. New theories spring up on every hand, and attack without hesitation our most sacred institutions ; — even the Christian religion itself is summoned again to make its defence. Having displaced, as they think, the Creator of all things, it would be an amusing sight, were it not that they have a large follow- ing of well-meaning but not over well -informed dupes, to behold the self-worshiping knot of materialistic philoso- phers, each striving with frantic eagerness to seize the crank of the universe and show astonished intelligences what sweet music he can make among the revolving spheres. We may deplore this prevalent inconoclastic spirit, and wish it were otherwise ; but we shall gain nothing by attempting, after a cowardly fashion, to blink the unwelcome fact out of sight. On the contrary, we should gird ourselves like brave men to meet it. The time has passed, never to return, when we shall be able to control men's opinions by statute. Truth henceforward will be compelled to rely exclusively on her legitimate weapons — reason and evidence — for her triumphs. But let us not be concerned that this is so. No fears need be entertained that she will suffer from the change. She asks nothing more in her contests than a fair field. And it is well for all of us that there is left us but one way of beating an opponent, and that is by i66 JOHN HANCOCK argument. Neither can the thinking of any community hereafter be done by a class of men who claim the right on account of their supposed superiority of wisdom and intelligence. We shall in due time recognize the fact that one man can no more do another's thinking than he can do his eating. Doubtless men of talent and genius will always have their just and appropriate influence in the conduct of affairs ; but the distance between thinkers, as a class, and workers will gradually diminish as the lat- ter accustom themselves more and more to mingle mental activity with their toil. For we may declaim as much and eloquently as we please of the dignity of labor, but it shall be the veriest demagogism unless thinking 'is to accompany that labor. Hard, drudging labor, undirected by any ray of intelligence, has nothing ennobling in it, and the sooner workingmen recognize this truth the bet- ter it will be for their future. Fortunately, all labor, even the humblest and the rudest, is the better done for having a working brain as well as a working hand engaged in it. Goethe has said, *' Man's task is not to solve the prob- lem of the universe, but to fmd out what he can do.'* And this is the great question to be settled by our work- ingman. Not what he can do in material things (for that has already been pretty thoroughly demonstrated), but what he can do in the things that are intellectual and which pertain to his true manhood — a thing that in the humblest transcends the glory of kings and the grandest achievements of science and philosophy. The first and great thing for him to do, as must appear to every one, is to learn how to make the most of himself ; how to direct his powers to the best advantage ; learn not to underestimate himself, nor yet to be puffed up SELECTIONS FROM HANCOCK'S WRITINGS. 167 with a vain conceit, which is the parent of unprofitable, longings and hopes never to be realized ; learn that that life is most pleasing in the sight of heaven and good men which, in whatever station it may be placed, is bravely spent in the discharge of duty. Let him not be anxious, either, to climb into places for which neither education nor talent has fitted him, serenely conscious that to be a man is far better than to be a seeker for place, however high its honors or fat its perquisites. Not envious, either, when Mrs. Shoddy rolls by in her car- riage, whilst he trudges the dusty highway on foot ; — in short, not estimating too highly the outer adornments of life, but the rather giving heed to the things that pertain to its internal beauty; a beauty which, either in peasant or kaiser, is a joy forever. I would not be misunderstood. There is not too much ambition in the world. Far from it. But this ambition needs a noble direction. In this country, especially, in which the way of usefulness lies open and broad before all men, our whole people ought to be filled with an eager desire to achieve a manliness commensurate with their privileges ; to desire it with such intensity as that the thought shall keep them constant company in their daily avocations, — ^that they shall wrestle for it and make sacrifices for it so long as life shall last. The power of a great idea, the product of an intense and powerful mind, has already been alluded to. And has not a good thought its power also, when made a constant companion, even though the companion of the com- monest mind ? For shall it not gradually transform a nature rude and coarse into one refined and pure ? But in order that it may exert this transforming influence, too much stress can not be laid upon the fact that this l68 JOHN HANCOCK. good thought is not to be an occasional but a constant guest of the mind, going with men into the midst of the hurry and turmoil of that strife which wrings subsis- tence from perverse nature and more perverse circum- stances, — going with them as they follow the plow, shove the plane, swing the axe, or wield the mattock and the spade. And they who teach, and those who preach, and we who lecture, shall have taught, and preached, and lectured in vain — aye, all our teaching and preaching and lecturing will have proved the merest idiotic babbling if they shall have created within the soul of no listener one aspiration at least to lead a truer life. There is but one way for a man to make the most of himself, and that way is to educate himself. No one can know what powers may lie hid within him until he has applied the touchstone of training. Without education, he is scarcely more powerful than the monkey from whom some philosophers declare him to be descended in a direct line. Of course we use the word " education " not in its restricted sense of school-book training, but in that larger sense which includes all training which gives additional skill or power of thought. The learning of the schools should not be overvalued, for that leads to narrow pedantry; nor must it be undervalued — as it often is by laboring men — for that leads to nothing ; unless it be to petrify all the institutions of society into solid, ugly forms, and keep men in the condition of the savage. It has not been many years — not half a hun- dred, at any rate — since the general run of our farmers were accustomed to sneer at those they called ** book- farmers " — ^that is, those who attempted to apply the principles of science to their work. And these sneerers SELECTIONS FROM HANCOCK'S WRITINGS. 169 turned up the derisive noses they had followed so long and with such confidence at the new-fangled steel plows and reaping machines, and stuck to their wooden mould- boards and reaping-hooks with a pertinacity worthy Sidney Smith's conservative, who refused to look at the new moon on account of the regard he entertained for that venerable institution, the old one. But they awoke from their stupidity only to find that the soil of their farms, disgusted with the unscientific treatment it had received, had slipped away, leaving in its stead nothing but stubborn clay, glittering sand, or bare rocks. So the ** visionary book-farmers " came out of the contest with flying colors ; as intelligence always will when pitted against ignorance and unreasoning prejudice. Now unless it be in some secluded region where the whistle of the locomotive is never heard, and the daily paper is unknown, no one is foolish enough to deny his obliga- tions to the science which enables him to read the soil beneath his feet as an open book. His prejudices, his wooden mould-boards, and his reaping-hooks are thrown aside together as useless lumber. To say, as is often said, that the laboring man is no better for education is insufferable nonsense. He can run a straighter furrow and hew a straighter line from having had his eye and muscles trained in drawing. He can chop a log in two, or dig a post-hole the quicker when a thinking brain has enabled the laboring hand to take advantage of nature and, as Emerson has it, com- pels gravitation to work as its helper. The advantage education affords in the performance of common labor is not a matter of mere conjecture, but is a fact established by actual experiment in large factories and work-shops, where many hundreds and thousands of hands are 170 JOHN HANCOCK. employed. And it is not the testimony of employers alone but of employes, as well ; gathered, not from a single locality, but from every quarter of the earth. The result is the more striking from the low standard taken for the measurement ; that standard being only the ability to read and write. The superiority of educated labor, it will be readily ' concluded, would have been still more strikingly manifested if the standard of a higher culture had been applied. The day is not far distant, we may trust, when gov- ernments will come to perceive that that nation will be strongest in which ' knowledge is most thoroughly diffused. Perhaps even our rulers may come, in that good time, to place less reliance on the intuitions of the untaught American minds, and to recognize the fact that a knowledge of spelling, grammar, arithmetic, and even higher branches, does not necessarily make a man unpractical, and disqualify him for office of statesman- ship. That men should strive to know more because it makes them more skillful as soldiers, as day laborers, as mechanics, as farmers, and in all the vocations of life — and this is an object of no mean consideration — would be planting the standard we follow on too low a level. There is no hereditary rank among souls. The soul of the peasant has as high an intrinsic value as that of the lord. But a soul may slumber as a spark in a heap of the ashes of lust and all brutal passions, or burn with a pure and radiant flame fanned .by all the kindly winds of heaven. The divine origin of the soul and Plato's doc- trine of its preexistence is thus beautifully set forth by Wordsworth: SELECTIONS FROM HANCOCK'S WRITINGS. 171 '* Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting : The soul that rises with us, our life's star, Hath had elsewhere its setting, And Cometh from afar : Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory do we come. From God who is our home." It is the recognition of this grandeur of manhood — not in what it does, but in what it is — that lies at the bottom of all true democracy. And it is the recognition of the religious element in man that makes a government by the people possible. Eliminate from men's minds the belief in a Supreme Being and the immortality of the soul, and instead of order and government, we shall have all swallowed up in a' rayless anarchy; a very hill of gloomy despair, more chaotic and terrible than any- thing portrayed by the imagination of a Milton or Dante. No feeling mind can contemplate the history of the Common Man unmoved. Through all its annals, his has been a sad fate. Upon him have rested a world's bur- den and suffering. The car of events has rolled forwards, sometimes slowly, sometimes rapidly, but always over his crushed body and bruised spirit. While to the few above there has shone a light of gladness, increasing from a dim dawn to a golden flood, the masses below have groped in darkness and apathy or despair. To be born to drudge, to die, has been their monotonous story. But I feel — feel most profoundly — that for these masses a better day has already arisen : that the light of a Christian civilization is penetrating, with cheering radiance, more and more into the valley of their humili- ation. 172 JOHN HANCOCK. And how must our best emotions be stirred as we behold these human souls, so long bowed down in des- pair, shaking off the apathy that has so long held them in the bonds of ignorance, arise, and, with trembling and uncertain footsteps at first, but ' gradually growing firmer and truer, join in the grand march of humanity in the path of progress, — making their daily labor vocal with happy praise ! And what an arena for work is this broad field of humanity ! With what a noble zeal ought all of us to enter into its labors, — ^for we live not unto ourselves ! How petty are all personal ambitions com- pared with the ambition which has for its object the improvement of a race ! To be the executive head of a great nation is, indeed, a noble position, but one not inconsistent with the lowest and most selfish aims ; but to be the head of a great movement for the amelioration of the condition of mankind — or to be even the humblest worker in such a movement — is far nobler, and utterly inconsistent with meanness of intellect or heart. But he who works in this broad field of humanity must not be impatient for results, for in the moral and intellectual, as in the physical world, a normal growth is slow and will not bear too much forcing. The seed that he sows with infinite toil may show no signs of fruit in his day, — and yet he shall not be without his reward in the conscious- ness of duty performed. He need expect but little grat- itude, either, for what he does; for gratitude is the pro- duct of magnanimous souls only, which souls are them- selves again chiefly the product of liberal culture. The bravest man in all the earth is he who dares to stand alone in the right, and the most god-like is he who works for other's without expectation of reward. We hear much of eight hour laws, and combinations SELECTIONS FROM HANCOCK'S WRITINGS. 173 among craftsmen to prevent their trades being over- crowded, but they mistake the nature of their difficulties. All such expedients are unphilosophical, and in the very nature of things, transitory and of evil effect. There can be little doubt that the number of hours for a day's labor will, from causes now at work, — such as improve- ments in and a wider application of machinery, — soon be very considerably reduced ; but whether this reduction shall inure to the benefit of the workingman will depend upon himself alone — upon the use he makes of the time thus gained. If he shall devote it to rendering him- self more skillful in his craft, to making himself wiser and in building up for himself a nobler manhood, then his profit will be great indeed ; but if it shall be spent in carousings in drinking saloons or places of worse resort, then will this leisure have proved a curse instead of a blessing, for no drudgery, however severe, can crush a man into the very earth like vicious idleness. We may well rejoice when the time for greater leisure shall come in, provided men have learned first how best to use that leisure. The masses may multiply expedients like those just named to better their condition, but they will prove as futile as the idle wind. There is no escape for them into a better position (I do not mean by a better position an escape from labor) except through the doorway of knowl- edge ; and we may thank Providence that, in this country at least, the same temple of learning gives free access to rich and poor alike ; that here the son of the washer- woman may bear away the prize from the youth who is clothed in purple and fine linen and fares sumptuously every day. To know more, then, should be an ever-present 174 JOHN HANCOCK. determination of the laborer, — to read more books, to see more pictures, to hear more music ; in short, to avail himself of every possible means of culture. Society is only strong in proportion to the amount of moral solidity and vital thought-power it contains, and this amount will depend upon the facilities society affords for the education of its whole people, and their dispos- ition to avail themselves of these facilities. We boast of our free schools, but let us see for a moment whether we are making the most of them. It is true the instruction given in them takes a wider sweep than formerly. We now not only attempt to form the intellect in them, but to form character also. But, let me ask, what complete- ness of intellectual training we are likely to be able to give a child, or what maturity of character, before it has arrived at the age of thirteen years ? And yet if we examine the statistics of school attendance in our cities and towns we shall find less than one-fifth of the pupils above the age mentioned. If to the thousands of pupils withdrawn from school before they have attained suffic- ient maturity of mind to think correctly upon the sim- plest subjects, we add those other thousands who go to school not at all, and from whose ranks our criminal classes are constantly recruited, we shall find an amount of ignorance in our communities truly alarming. And when we reflect that it is such men as these are sure to become who are expected to govern themselves; to decide by their votes questions that may well test the highest intelligence and calmest judgment, — questions upon which the welfare, nay, the very existence of the republic may depend, — we may well stand appalled at the issues presented us. For myself I can see but one remedy for all this, and that remedy is compulsory SELECTIONS FROM HANCOCK'S WRITINGS. 175 education. We must open schools everywhere; must plant them in the most desolate regions of vice in our great cities and towns, — and then reach out the strong arm of the law to compel parents to give their children an opportunity to learn. If they prefer a private to a public school, they should be allowed to enjoy this pref- erence, of course ; but let it be understood that hence- forth and forever, in this goodly country of ours, there shall be no uneducated class. Parents have no such exclusive and overshadowing property in their offspring as to entitle them to dwarf their minds, or bodies, either, through ignorance or caprice. I am aware that in the beginning we shall have to make haste slowly in this great undertaking. It may not be prudent in a first legislation to do more than declare that all children under a given age — say thir- teen — shall be compelled to attend school, and that all above that age — and under, say, eighteen — not engaged in some regular employment, shall be under the same compulsion. Of course we shall not rest satisfied until in the end we have established a higher standard of education for the masses of our people than has ever been set up by any other nationality. It may be objected that no republican government has a right to exercise such a power over its citizens as is involved in a scheme like this ; but if a republican government, which is but the organized will of its people, has no right to interpose where so much good is to be secured and where so much evil is to be avoided, and to go further, where the very existence of the State itself is involved, what is a republican government good for ? But nothwithstanding the importance of schools, it is not in them alone that all education is obtained ; though 176 JOHN HANCOCK. they are at the foundation of the most of it. The earth and all the things therein and the glories and wonders of the heavens are God's university. In them are found problems whose solution may well test all the powers of the grandest intellects. But not alone to such intellects do they appeal. The earth is filled with scenes^ of such quiet, as well as resplendent, beauty as, having been once perceived by the trained eye, shall leave an ineffaceable picture in the mind, ever exercising upon it a heathful influence. Hawthorne — in his story of the Great Stone Face, with a wealth and beauty of expression rivaled by no other American author, and with a keen perception of the unfolding of the powers of the human soul — has depicted, in a story touching and noble, the profound and lasting influence of Nature in her grander moods in moulding character. Most of those who hear me will remember the story. It is of a farmer boy, born in a secluded New England valley, poor and untutored, but living in view of a remarkable production of nature. This was the resemblance to a human face of gigantic proportions, serene, majestic and noble in appearance, formed by rocks piled up in fantastic fashion high on the mountain side, and overlooking the whole valley. By the constant contemplation of this face, whose expression was at once grand and sweet, the mind and character of the lad began to unfold themselves into the similitude of the image he so revered. He grew in soul as he grew in years, and gre^t men came from abroad to listen to the simple husbandman, who had ideas, unlike those of other men, not gained from books, but of a higher tone, — a tranquil and familiar majesty, as if he had been talking with the angels as his familiar friends. When he had SELECTIONS ^ROM HANCOCK'S WRITINGS. 177 grown old, he preached to his simple neighbors in words that were of life, because a life of good deeds and holy- love was melted into them, and his countenance glowed with the thought within ; then it wa^ that his likness to that great stone face, whose look of grand beneficence seemed to embrace the world, was seen to be complete. 3ut Nature reveals not her choicest beauties except to those who come to her with loving spirits and are willing to learn of her. Them she makes seers of wondrous visions, and bestows upon them senses to feel exquisite pleasures all unknown to hard and vulgar souls. To the ignorant she is a dumb oracle, giving back no response to their vain questionings. It is one of the glories of modern methods of school instruction that they bring into our school-rooms Nature and her ways of teaching, and thus unite her methods with those of the more artificial ones of books. And I believe these true and healthy methods of education are to accelerate greatly the intellectual and moral growth of our people by presenting knowledge to the young in more attractive forms than has been done heretofore, thus leading them up through the tangible lessons of the material world into the world of books and abstract thinking, joining as it were, in a beautiful union, the thought of God and the thought of man. Our people must be drawn to read more, also. He makes a great mistake who supposes the knowledge gained from text-books, however extended it may be, constitutes an education. One may have made all their contents his own, and yet be comparitively ignorant. Contact with the noble thoughts found in literature is that which makes a man's mind grow; and in no other way can the highest culture be obtained. As Sir John 178 JOHN HANCOCK. Herschel has it, books are the great civilizers, not per- mitting men to remain savages. Libraries are only a little less important as a means of education than the common school itself, and one ought to be found in every school district. It has been said that one who has learned another language besides his own, has made himself twice the man he was before ; in like manner, that city or town which has erected within her borders a great free library has doubled her power. Its influence will permeate every avenue of her industries. It will give her merchants more comprehensive notions of the operation of the laws of trade. Through it, her lawyers will learn more thoroughly the principles of that science which has been termed the perfection of human reason; and her divines be enabled to present the truths of .the gospel they preach with a profounder knowledge of its mysteries. It will stimulate the inventive powers of her artisans, and give her laborers the power to strike harder and truer blows ; and in all classes, civilization and morality will have a more certain and enduring foot- hold. From a city or town blessed with free schools and free books will go forth into every region young men strong, acute, wasting no power, prodigal of nothing but industry, who shall tunnel the mountains, bridge the rivers, and build the railroads and houses of less thoughtful peoples. And what a solemn yet delightful place is a great library ! In it we have piled up, not the dried mummies of ancient men, as in the catacombs of Egypt, but in the volumes, ranged around, we have embalmed their minds; their souls. No death has come, or can ever come, to them ; they live in perennial youth. As deep under the hills are stored away, in the shape of coal lumps, the SELECTIONS FROM HANCOCK'S WRITINGS. 179 light and heat the sun distributed to our world in primeval ages, to wait man's liberating hand that he may be blessed with their grateful light and warmth, so, in the books on library shelves, are stored, from all times, those great thoughts that shall quicken and enlighten the minds of students, and prove a rich possession to the poorest. The people need, too, free picture galleries and cheap music. That city which gives her artists no support, or but a mean and niggardly one, and thus drives them beyond her borders into regions possessing more liber- ality and taste, does a suicidal thing, and will soon find herself sinking into the pitiable and deserved condition of apathetic indifference to all enterprises of pith and moment. Art is the fme, spiritual essence of a town — its soul ; and without this soul it can only make a pre- tense of being alive. Its people can no more become great in what constitutes a high civilization without a generous support of art than they can live without blood and brains. To the poor man, a fme picture or a noble strain of music will prove a subtle force to draw him, for a time, from the hardness of his every-day life into the loftier regions of the ideal, — ^to transport him from turb- ulent realms into those serene and heavenly ones whose light is such as never ** shone on sea or on land." But I must bring this plea for the masses of men — a plea so far beneath the greatness of the theme — to a close. It will be seen, if I have succeeded in making myself understood, that the burden of this plea is for a higher manhood ; that while the improvement of man's physical condition — which, through the almost infinite forms and activities of scientific research, is going for- ward with such wondrous strides — is not to be under- i8o JOHN HANCOCK. valued, his moral and intellectual improvement is to be our great aim ; that we are not to be limited in our hopes of the future by our experience of the past,— for we may not unreasonably expect that a century of the future, in its development of all true growth and wisdom, will exceed a cycle of the past, and will open up such a prospect for the Common Man as has not been dreamed of until within the last few prolific years. Another purpose has been to speak such words of cheer, to those engaged in a struggle with adverse cir- cumstances, as lay within the compass of my powers. I would have laboring men respect their own man- hood, and not be content to live an unthinking, animal life only ; to be proud that it is from their vigorous ranks that the great men of earth are constantly recruited ; and to remember that education is the only way to the amelioration of the condition of the race. I would have all men study the beauty and grandeur of Nature, in order that they may form a nobler concep- tion of the author of it all. I would have them study art, so that their tases may be refmed and elevated ; to study books, so that they may make great and good thoughts their constant companions. '*It is noticed," says Emerson, ''that the considera- tion of the great periods and spaces of astronomy induces a dignity of mind and an indifference to death." Every man should, therefore, endeavor to fashion him- self somewhat after the greatness of Nature, — a sort of titanic manhood, that rejoices in battling with adverse circumstances, and remembers that no high endeavor goes without its reward. I would have men who neither write great epics nor perform them capable of appreciat- ing their heroism. I would have the masses of people SELECTIONS FROM HANCOCK'S WRITINGS. l8i grow up in such sturdy honesty as will enable them, in a venal age, to laugh at bribes ; and of such virtue as to carry them through a profligate one with an unsoiled reputation ; to live lives so simply and quietly grand, in their frankness and integrity, that they may shame us all into more righteous ways. To become such men, neither great learning, great wealth, nor high rank is required. Such a manhood is perfectly consistent with poverty and a humble position ; though without a cer- tain greatness of soul, it is impossible; for in the language of another: **The highest qualifications are not those which money can procure, nor those which the want of it can hinder ; the highest gratifi- cations are those of which the means are given free; and the means, so far as the dispensations of nature are concerned, are distributed with a most bountiful equality. We need but health and a modest subsistence; then, with simple tastes, the world is to us a resplen- dent dwelling, a richly furnished home. We have then a vast property in the works of God ; we are lords of a magnificent possession ; and to the utmost capacity of our faculties, the past, the present, the mighty universe, is our inheritance. The stars give all their joy without price to those who look up to them with a wake- ful spirit ; and when their beams meet, in the clear eye, a radiance from the soul within, to that soul the whole arch of heaven becomes a blaze of living glory. Can gold or gems present so rich a splendor ? Can art pre- pare so fair a show as those solemn heavens which God himself stretcheth out as a curtain; which he spreadeth abroad as a tent to dwell in .?'' i82 JOHN HANCOCK. A TRIBUTE TO PATRIOTS. Address at Soldiers' Circle, Eastern Graveyard, Chillicothe, O., Memorial Day, 1887. COMRADES AND FELLOW CITIZENS :— We do well to worship the hero, whether of high or low degree, for it is he that stirs men to great thoughts as well as great deeds. Without him the earth would shrivel into a nar- row space. The reputations of the great officers of the rebellion, such as Grant, Thomas, McPherson, Sedg- wick, and a thousand others, are fixed. The sky-pierc- ing monuments of their fame are builded, and they will stand forever. There is no need of words of praise for them on such an occasion as this. Their memories crowd upon us unbidden, *' trailing clouds of glory as they come." This day is specially set apart to lay a loving tribute on the graves of the brave men who won the victories their officers planned; the Common Soldiers who carried the musket; men who have but short mon- uments, and many of whom — alas ! poor fellows — have none. But before we speak our few inadequate words of the Common Soldier, let us turn, for a few moments, to that grandest figure in modern history — perhaps in all history — around which, as a center, the patriotic and tender memo- ries of our war for national perpetuity gather themselves. On his shoulders was laid a tremendous burden. The Union, cemented by the blood of our fathers, was in awful peril. By him were to be marshalled and directed the resources of the nation for the defense of this Union. And how great and good our President proved himself to be under these trying circumstances. This man from the prairies, — uncouth in person, without school training, and SELECTIONS FROM HANCOCK'S WRITINGS. 183 with small opportunities for social culture, — in virtue of his great natural powers and his supreme manliness, proved his title to a place among masterly men. In puplic affairs, America has had many men of large talents ; but Lincoln is her one man of genius. Humor is that element in man which rounds off and gives grace to more substantial qualities. It lubricates the hinges of his mind, which otherwise, give out but a grating sound. It is essential to moral and intellectual as well as physical health. He that dwells in gloom is wont to lose sight of the good Lord and sympathy with his children ; but the genial light of humor dissipates the cloud, and warms the heart towards man and all that lives on this pleasant earth of ours. It is almost always, too, accompanied by the acutest susceptibilities of sympathy for the unfortunate. The genial humorist may laugh at their follies, but he pities their weaknesses and relieves their necessities. The good Abraham Lin- coln is a notable example of this combination of humor and deep feeling. In the multitude of amusing stories attributed to him — most of them falsely so, no doubt — we are apt to lose sight of the real man. While he yet lived, many that were not unfriendly to him, deplored what seemed to them* triviality in the midst of events momentous and terrible. But time has shown how incapable they were of fathoming his nature. The great deep of his spirit was an ocean of love for man, which would have been too dark and sad, had not its surface been illuminated by the gleams of his kindly humor. From those melancholy eyes of his, suffused with the light of an infinite pity, looked out the true soul of the author of the Emancipation Proclamation and the Gettysburg address. 1^4 JOHN HANCOCK* Though Lincoln's thought at the beginning of the war, as was that of most people of the North, was fixed exclusively upon the restoration of the Union as it had been, it was not long before his practical and capacious mind became convinced that no reunion of the dis- severed members could be permanent, unless slavery, the one always disturbing element, should be uncondition- ally abolished. And the adoring affection of the emancipated slaves for their liberator conferred the highest honor on those who gave as well as on him who received. An instance of this affection, not entirely without pathos, came under my own notice. When the President, in the summer of '64, visited General Grant at City Point, the two rode together over to Petersburg, at that time, as is well known, the objective point of army operations. On one side of the country road leading from one point to the other, and some hundred yards or so from it, was the camp of that part of the Eighteenth Corps composed of colored troops. On the opposite side of the road was a corps, or part of a corps, of white troops. As it was not known on our side of the Appomattox that the Presi- dent was in the neighborhood, he and General Grant passed up towards Petersburg attracting little attention. But gradually it became bruited about that the two had been seen riding towards the front, and all were on the alert to get sight of them on their way back. Late in the afternoon, far up the road, they were seen coming — without an escort, according to my recollection. The moment it became generally known that the President was at hand, the colored troops unanimously broke camp, and rushed to the roadside. An army of bayonets could not have held them back. And such demonstra- SELECTIONS FROM HANCOCK'S WRITINGS. 185 tions of joy I never before beheld. They gave them- selves up to their feelings with all the ardor and aban- don of their race. With a commingling of wild, inde- scribable gestures, all shouted, **Hurrah for Massa Linkum ! God bless Massa Linkum! " tears of joy and love all the while running down their black cheeks. The white troops, looking on, thinking perhaps that General Grant might feel a little lonesome in this exuberant dis- play of feeling in which he seemed to have no part, tried to set up a counter shout for him, but it didn't make even a dent in the great ocean of sound flowing from the stentorian lungs of their colored brethren. But it was not only on his own side in this greatest of civil wars that the humane side of Mr. Lincoln's charac- ter was shown. He was magnanimous to those warring against him — ^too magnanimous many of us then thought. But whatever of bitterness there was in the bosom of others against the South — and such a feeling was not altogether unnatural then — ^there seemed to be little or none in his. This is now conceded South as well as North, and the fact is likely to be more fully corrobor- ated as time rolls on. Franklin has been called the incarnation of common sense; the typical American. He was pushing, econom- ical, thrifty. But he was something more and better. Whilst he was careful in material things, he did not neglect the things that belong to the higher life. His hunger for knowledge was all-devouring, and in his boy- hood he half starved his body to satisfy it. He was, in addition, public-spirited, always contriving something for the good of his fellow-men, whether it was a stove or a free library. A man great in science, and greater in patriotism and statesmanship, a man not altogether i86 JOHN HANCOCK. unfit to be a model for aspiring young men in our own day. But in Abraham Lincoln they have an exemplar of a nobler cast. While not so wise in wordly affairs as Franklin, his influence on American life will be more profound and pervasive, an influence to draw all men to the worship of the loftiest ideals, and one which will never through all ages have an end. It has been with no foolish belief that I could by any words of mine add a single honor to this grand and lov- able character — no words can do that, for his deeds are his monument — that I have written these few pages of warm personal admiration, but that, peradventure, the hearts of some of the young men gathered about me might be stirred by an intenser desire to serve nobly the country for which he lived and died. Some one has recently said that the only perfectly just war the world has ever seen was the war for the preservation of the American Union. And if we run our minds back over the bloody record of time, we shall see how nearly correct this judgment is. Possibly we should want to join with it our Revo- lutionary War as its fellow. And as this war for the preservation of the Union rose above other wars in its sublime justice, insomuch were the armies that fought its battles composed of men of a finer intellectual and moral fiber. The cause and its defenders fitted together with a beautiful symmetry. The armies of other coun- tries are largely filled with men of desperate fortunes or by an unrelenting conscription from the whole popula- tion able to bear arms. The men that followed our flag were largely volun- teers, and of the choicest of our manhood. Every class was represented. The farmer from his fields, the day SELECTIONS FROM HANCOCK*S WRITINGS. 187 laborers from the streets, the artisan from his workshop, the clerk from the store, the student from college and his professor with him, the lawyer and the judge, the preacher and the schoolmaster, all laid down their tools and their books to take up the sword and the musket. In this wonderful outpouring of citizens all social distinctions were obliterated in the devotion of a great purpose. The comforts of pleasant homes were soon forgotten, or remembered but dimly, and hard-tack, pork and beans, and the army blue stood in their places as the unromantic realities. The utmost freedom was exchanged for a stern discipline and the horrors of the battle-field and the prison. It has been said that it was largely owing to the superior education of her soldiery that Prussia obtained so signal a triumph over Austria in 1866. And it was the same cause that gave Germany, a few years later, her memorable conquest of France. Now granting all that may be claimed for the com- mon school education of the German soldier of the ranks, the fact seems to me incontestable that the ranks of our army contained a much larger proportion of well educated men. But possibly school education may have been too highly estimated in the ordinary operations of an army ; certainly the Southern armies, with a much lower grade of educational training, fought with a good deal of effectiveness. Such a training cannot compen- sate for a lack of discipline or of ability to take sure aim ; just as a general education, while a splendid foun- dation for technical knowledge, can not be a substitute for it. A college graduate will not be able to hit the bull's-eye the first time he fires his rifle, simply for the reason he knows Greek: but doubtless he will learn to l88 JOHN HANCOCK. make a center-shot somewhat the sooner from the dis- cipline that put Greek into his head. Besides, there sometimes comes a great crisis in battle when not only the skill of officers but the intellectual resources of the rank and file are required to meet the exigency. It is on such an occassion as this that educated brains tell ; and such an occasion was the famous assault on Mis- sionary Ridge. The commander-in-chief had elaborated a plan of battle with great care and according to the science of war. A part of that plan was, that when the attacking columns in the front of the Ridge had taken the enemy's rifle pits at its base, they were to halt, intrench, and wait further orders. The part of the bat- tle's program which brought our forces into the enemy's rifle pits was carried out in exact accordance with the prearranged plan of the general, who, surrounded by some of the most eminent officers of the war, and from a position that commanded the whole field, viewed the operation with the utmost satisfaction. But suddenly something struck his gaze not so satisfactory. The men who had taken the rifle pits were not stopping, were not entrenching, but were marching right up the steep acclivity, standards at the apex of the wedge-like columns. ''Who gave that order ?" was the angry exclamation of the commander. ''Thomas, did you do it?" Thomas hadn't done it; Granger hadn't done it; none of the generals had done it. No ; that was a time when the common soldiers took command. The move- ment was from their brain. They saw as one man the thing to be done, and with an unsurpassed courage, car- rying their officers with them, they never stopped — they could not be stopped — until they reached the crest of the Ridge, and the battle was won. The annals of war fur- SELECTIONS FROM HANCOCK'S WRITINGS. 189 nish no parallel to this action. Here for once the Amer- ican private soldier had a chance to show the stuff he was made of, and that he had a brain to devise as well as a hand to execute. Everlasting honor, then, to the thirty thousand generals who marched up the rocky face of Missionary Ridge ! The intelligence of our Common Soldier was such that he could not be made to believe, however stout the assertions of his commanders, or however ingeniously con- structed the bulletins from the War Department, that a' defeat was a victory, — and the number of that sort of victories on both sides was pretty large. The people at home might be deceived, and often were ; but his straight-seeing eye was not to be blinded. There was not a private soldier who believed — whatever some offi- cers might pretend to believe in the matter — that the first day's fight at Shiloh or the fight at Chickamauga was a Union victory. On the contrary, he has never doubted that the Federal army on both those occasions escaped annihilation as an organized body by the barest scratch. I mean not to criticise unkindly the blunders of commanders ; but after every charitable deduction has been made, there can be no doubt that many of these blunders were crimes. The private soldiers suffered again and again from what a forcible writer has called the awful incompetency of their leaders, and they knew perfectly where the blame lay. Could anything be more pathetic than the words of the wounded soldier in the dreadful hospital, after the attack on the stone wall at Fredericksburg, as given by the writer a moment since mentioned : ''My God; I shouldn't care that my leg is gone, if there had been any chance." A competent general doesn't send men in where there isn't any ipo JOHN HANCOCK. chance. Such an operation is not a battle ; it is a slaughter. I have always looked on that New England general as one of the finest heroes of the war who, having committed a great mistake by which many lives were uselessly sacrificed, did not, when stricken by remorse, skulk off to a peaceful home, but resigned his commission, volunteered in the ranks, and carried his musket as a private soldier throughout the remainder of the conflict. Sad to say, his was the only known case of the kind. The war dragged on month after month, and the months lengthened into years; ardent aspirations had been quenched by dire disasters. The fine material of which the armies were composed wasted away with no seeming results for the costly sacrifices made. The boys " had no chance." Would it have been at all wonderful if they had become discouraged ? Had they been less intelligent and less patriotic, they might have done so ; even given up in despair, and listened to sug- gestions of compromise ; might have given their voices to the patching up of a delusive peace, with none of the great questions, submitted to the wager of battle, settled. But it had been made apparent to all classes of our peo- ple, and to none more than the soldier, that there could be but one of two endings to the war, either the uncon- ditional restoration of the Union, with slavery — which had been the cause of all the dissensions between the two sections — forever abolished ; or the permanent divis- ion of our nationality, with all the woes likely to follow. There had ceased to be room for any compromises. On this basis the controversy was to be fought to the bitter end ; and the brunt of the fighting was to come to the private soldier. Amid all discouragements, the situation SELECTIONS FROM HANCOCK'S WRITINGS. 191 for the officers was ameliorated by what could not, to any considerable extent, affect the privates — the looking for- ward to promotion in rank. And their chances in this direction were always increased by a bloody battle, whether it were a victory or a defeat. I neither say nor believe that the officer was not as brave and patriotic as the private soldier, but that the former had the incen- tive of ambition — not an ignoble motive either — ^to stay his courage when darkness encompassed him, while the love of his country's flag was the only support of the latter. The private in all his actions was far divorced from every selfish motive. He displayed a splendid courage with no expectations of honor or material reward. He suffered privations, he marched, he fought and died from pure love of country. I do not mean to assert that this love was always a conscious feeling ; but I believe, hid away as a live coal in the core of his being, it was the impulse that directed the actions of his soldier life. In consequence of that demoralization which always follows in the track of war, — even, it is sad to own, in the track of a perfectly just war, — it is impos- sible that in some poor tempted souls this coal dwindled to a last feeble spark, then died out and left all within cold and dark. But, Comrades, we have a right to cherish the belief that such instances were few. What a grand heritage have our fallen comrades left us ! Any language that should adequately set forth its greatness might well seem to foreign peoples the lan- guage of boastful extravagance. We ourselves can scarcely realize how wonderful our daily growth is, and the pitch of power and wealth to which we have already arrived ; much less can we conceive what shall be the splendor of our estate in the future. It is a per- 192 JOHN HANCOCK. fectly sane prediction that within a century all North America will be living under one flag, and that in another century the boundaries of the Great Republic will extend from the frozen ocean of the North to the straights of Magellan on the south ; or if not thus, as a great new world federation of republics. That we owe all these magnificent possibilities to the brave fellows who fought out the great question of nationality in our civil war, is not ascribing to them too high praise. For had it not been for them, our country would have been cut up into a number of warring divis- ions, and to its disintegration there could have been no end. But at what a price was this heritage bought ! I do not refer to the four thousand millions of debt incurred in the suppression of the rebellion, nor to the other thou- sands of millious destroyed in military operations. These were not overwhelming, and at the end of a quarter of a century we scarcely feel the burden. But the loss of the hundreds of thousands of the most energetic, the most intelligent, and the noblest of the young men of the nation, can never be repaired. When a great soul drops out of the world the void is never filled. When we think of these young men sleeping in bloody graves, their high hopes and aspirations suddenly extinguished forever, we ask ourselves. Is our new Union worth the price paid for it ? With bowed heads we answer, yes ; and it is not to be doubted that if our heroes could speak to us from their last resting place their answer would be the same. But how shall we pay the debt of gratitude we owe our comrades ? To meet once a year to deck their graves with flowers is indeed a beautiful custom ; one, it SELECTIONS FROM HANCOCK'S WRITINGS. 193 is to be hoped, that will never be abandoned. Beautiful as this custom is, there are higher tributes to be paid to their memories. Our brothers of the tented field are growing gray, and their ranks are thinning fast. In another quarter of a century they will be nearly all gone. We can by a thoughtful kindliness materially lighten the burdens they are carrying on their march to their last camping ground. A story of the Emperor Alexander II. of Russia — our one staunch friend during the rebellion — will indicate our duty and the duty of the government to them. In the ranks of the troops serving about the Emperor's person was a young officer of dis- tinguished bravery, and equal poverty, and ■ possessed of not a little vanity, withal. It was found by some of his fellow officers that, though he carried a fme watch- chain, no watch was attached to it. This information was communicated to the Emperor. So, on some parade occassion, Alexander, either as a reproof of his officer's vanity, or possibly with an object less praiseworthy — a cruel kind of joke — pulled out his watch and, looking at it, said to the officer, "My watch tells me it is ten o'clock, what does your watch say?" **My watch. Sire," replied the young man with quiet dignity, ** tells me it is always time for me to die in your Majesty's ser- vice." ** And mine tells me further,'' instantly returned the Emperor, struck with the nobleness of the reply, and extending his watch sparkling with a thousand brilliants, ** that the time has come when some recompense should be made for such faithful devotion." Our comrades were ever ready to sacrifice themselves for their country; and to that country it should always be a pleasure, as it is a duty, to reward in all reasonable and proper ways such fidelity. The young son of the Chap- 194 JOHN HANCOCK. lain of the Soldiers' Home — a noble lad of sixteen — as he lay dying, threw his arms about his parent's neck, and his last words whispered in that parent's ear were, " Father, don't forget the soldiers." These words ought to be our country's motto. But a nobler way of honoring the memories of our departed comrades than either I have named, will be to strive with a consuming purpose to make our country worthy of their heroism. The greatness of a nation lies not in its size or material wealth. Athens was scarcely larger than one of our counties ; and yet her thought has in a large measure shaped the civilization of the world; and that thought will abide among men as long as time shall endure. The world is kept alive by two things, — great ideas and great deeds ; and the nation whose standard of thinking and doing is not planted upon these can not long survive. Bigness and boasting will not save her, nor will all the *' wealth of Ind." The great underlying principle of our national institu- tions is to give the common man a chance. To do this we must provide every facility for his education ; for without intelligence and morality he will be a feeble crea- ture, dangerous to himself and society. The mighty tide of immigration throws upon our shores a million of people every year. They come from all the countries of the world, a wonderful mixture of the industrious and peace- fully disposed, and socialists, anarchists and nihilists. All are to be moulded by our educational forces into an honest, humane, law-abiding, and homogenous people ; — a hercu- lean task, indeed ! We must educate, too, into a more liberal patriotism than has been common in the world. The Greek thought everyone born outside the narrow limits of his country a barbarian ; and the Chinese holds SELECTIONS FROM HANCOCK'S WRITINGS. 195 the same notion in respect to foreigners. Our youth must view his country from a higher plane; and must constantly endeavor to make her worthy of a supreme love, in which there shall not be the slightest tinge of shame. We must also rear a class of statesmen who instead of pandering to the ignorance and prejudices of the people, will have the manliness to reprove them with the most courageous frankness when they are in the wrong. By cultivating and living such ideals will the rising generation show their appreciation of their glorious ancestry; and further show (in the immortal language of the Gettysburg address) their high resolve that *'our dead shall not have died in vain, and that, under God, the government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth."